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About Artist:
In 1951, Spain was a desolate, poverty stricken economy. After the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939), the country remained virtually invisible from the international stage. Cast under dictator Francisco Franco's shadow until 1975, Spain's working class struggled. It was under these conditions, in southeastern Spain, that Maria Del Pilar was born.
To escape the constant watchful eyes of the Franco spies, as well as the basic food shortages, Maria's father decided to leave to start a new life in France. He found work as a cement mixer in the south of France.
A year later, his wife and three daughters joined him. The family had boarded the train with two suitcases in hand. Maria was seven years old.
During the 1950s, the second wave of Spanish emigration was under way. The first wave in 1939 was made up of refugees seeking safety from Franco's approaching armies. The emigrants of the 1950s were mostly labourers and farmers looking for work to feed their families. In 1957, France was the land of opportunity. Maria walked down the street and touched a parked car, tasted a yogurt and watched television through a store window - all for the first time. But, at school she would be confronted with another new experience that was more difficult to understand.
The local population was expressing its unhappiness with the growing number of Spanish immigrants. Bitter remarks from teachers, schoolmates and passing pedestrians were common. After high school, Maria escaped Narbonne for the more metropolitan city of Montpellier where she studied architecture. As soon as she could, she wanted to go to Paris. She was certain in her mind that this was the place to be. With only 100 francs in her pocket, Maria boarded the train.
She stepped off at the Gare d'Austerlitz and found herself in a maze of buildings - no friends, family, job or place to live. She found a cheap hotel near the train station which was popular with the local prostitutes and thieves, and started her new life.
Maria found work at a large architectural firm, a world similar to Jacques Tati's Playtime, where anonymity and individuality are diluted. Her architectural experience in Paris allowed her to be part of an ambitious port development in the south of France in Gruissan.
She married a Canadian and followed him to Vancouver where she was lost in another land and another language. A sudden desire to return to Spain kindled. Maria had always been enamoured with colour and design but her talents had never been directed towards a canvas. Through painting, Maria rediscovered the lost colours and images that she had stored inside her for so long. The red of the corrida against the hard dry Spanish earth. The expansive range of blues and greens, melting together in the Mediterranean Sea. She began to reconstruct the land that she had left, but had never left her.
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