La Gallinero

This is my favorite painting in the world. i found it at a Goodwill or Salvation Army store and snatched it up like i was afraid someone else was going to take. i absolutely love it. There is no signature but it says $40.00 on the back. I think it is acrylic or gouache on a board. The stars are a metallic paint.

i have been writing about this painting even though i don't have a clue what the story is. The bride on the left seems like a ghost but maybe she's just not finished. The long ribbons of color make it magical realism to me. The trees, the moon and the stars are so prominent; they are like characters in the story.

DOES ANYONE KNOW THIS STORY? It may be my favorite painting in the world but i know it is probably more like folk art and not valuable. i don't care. But i really want to know the story. And i want to know if the painting is finished or is the bride on the left really a ghost?

i love to write but i'm not very good, so please be gentle. i am copying in a part of a story i am trying to write using this painting as inspiration. i guess the reason is to get your comments about any ideas in the story that you think relate to the painting.

So, mi amigos, mi chickies and roos, and especially mi Guerreros de la Luz, please help.

The Ghost Filled Moonlit Weddings of Two Brothers

The crescent moon watches the goings-on ready to add to the rituals in any manner helpful. She has seen this many times. It has it's place in the cycles. In her wake the people ride the seasons of learning, working, playing and resting. This wedding, one of so many others like it, did have it's curiosity. Moon looked again at the smaller of the two brides.

Had no one noticed her translucence or her not quite erectness? Moon tried to catch a few more of Sun's rays to reflect on the little bride's face. She wanted to get a better look but she was also confident her reflected light would compliment the bride's inner glow. The wake and the indirect light; that is what Moon could add to the rituals.

Moon was sure now. The little bride was well on her way to becoming a ghost. Fascinating, she thought.

The brides wore their moonlit gowns with all the reverence of their mothers before them.  Celesta and Menea could not have known the night’s shimmer was a gift from Moon but they felt grateful for the moon’s seemingly special glow.  The gowns were well worn, having been used by mothers and aunts before daughters, sisters, cousins and granddaughters.  

The aunts have disappeared.  They moved around the village busily doing their work but now they have gone. The moonlit wedding began with the two brides and two grooms pairing up and strolling arm in arm toward the village church. The aunts had colored the pathway giving the impression of ribbons stretching out toward the church plaza and into the church itself.

In dusk’s remaining light, full-sailed clouds tack across the sky without obscuring the star’s view too much.  Stars were warming up for the evening’s festivities and giggling like school girls.  The old mother oak and her sisters looked down on the red tiled roofs of the village and dug their roots a little deeper to ground the events.

The brother grooms have recently returned after years away and were still re-adjusting to life in the village.  Perhaps it was because they had been away so long and had forgotten, somehow, the dreamlike quality of evenings in the village, but the two men were surprised to find themselves walking in the real and the unreal. They wondered how they could have forgotten that the village was like this and they wondered why they had stayed away so long. How could they have forgotten how their feet felt so solidly on the ground here?