Art Paper

I will be discussing an oil painting by Roberto Chavez called El Tamolito del Hoyo. El Tamolito del Hoyo was created in 1959. It is an oil painting on Masonite. I chose this painting because the boy in the image drew me in. I was drawn more specifically to the expression on his face. I want to know what the boy is thinking. I want to know where he is and where he is from. I want to know about the boy.

In the lower left of the painting is a little brown house. The house has a white fence around it. The house looks like it is old and falling apart. Behind the house are green trees. The sky is an orange-ish color. It reminds of the color of the sky when the sun is setting. Towards the center of the picture is a boy. The boy looks like he is in his teens. He has brown short hair. The boy is wearing a blue long sleeved shirt, beige pants and brown boots. The blue shirt has some areas of green on the right side. The boy’s pants have brown spots on them, which makes me think that they are dirty. The boy has one hand in his pant pocket and one hand laying on the front of his pants. To the left of the boy is a brown structure with a round object sitting on the top. To the very left of the painting and behind the brown structure is a grayish wall. The wall has writing on it.

The painting is asymmetrically balanced. One way Chavez creates visual balance is with the brown structure to the left of the boy. The brown structure creates the same triangular shape as the roof of the house. Chavez also creates visual balance by making repeating elements. He uses warms colors (the boy’s pants and the sky). In Chavez’s panting the boy is comparatively much larger in size than the brown house. In Chavez’s painting there are comparatively more warms colors (the boy’s pants and sky) than there are cool colors (the blue shirt). The boy in the painting is not properly proportioned. His arms are too long and his legs are too short. The image has been composed in a harmoniously...