Karleen Pendelton Jimeénez, "Mapping The Territory : Problems Y Secretos Maravillosos de Las Indies," Uptown News Magazine, July 1998.

How to Approach the Art of Raul Guerrero: First, sit in the center with the stones. They are Raul Guerrero's " Mosaic Heads," colors cut into rocks. They are good company, while huge oil paintings surround you. These are massive dark backgrounds with intense bright hues superimposed. Stare in awe of the immense energy enveloping you.

Second, look closely. There are cryptic messages, a little lie those squiggly-lined pictures that transform into 3D spaceships and dinosaurs if you are patient enough to watch for a moment. The stories will reveal themselves to you. Allow them inside.

"Leyenda de Los Volcanes, for one, hangs modestly amongst the others, but seemed so extreme the day I visited Guerrero's home to talk to him about the new exhibit of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, in Raul M. Guerrero: Problemas y secretos marvaillosos de las Indias/Problems and Marvelous Secrets of the Indies. I had the opportunity to speak to the artist for over an hour, while we peered at "Leyenda de los Volcanes." It is an image of the tragic death of an indigenous woman. Her lover, a warrior, is totally distraught and drops tears along his cheeks. She subsequently transforms into a famous Mexican volcano. The picture is part of my chicana childhood. Every calendar from every Mexican store and restaurant carries that same image. It is as common as Ronald McDonald, but I never thought to ask what it meant. When Guerrero asks what I am thinking, I relate a childhood memory, clutching my mother's pant leg in one hand and my pretty calendar in the other, walking out of the Carniceria on Valley and Mission boulevards. He says, "That's what I want, everyone to bring their own stories to my pictures."

I want to know more about the myth. For Latinos growing up in the United States, gaps in cultural information become part of life. U.S. history courses in high schools intentionally overlook generations of brown lives. Mexican icons find us in out homes and communities, but there is limited access to explanation.

Guerrero's works speaks to these questions. The mythic image is traced over with the title, "FIN --, Es una pelicula Mexicana." Is this the end of a movie or the end of a culture? The description on the wall does mention the erosion of Mexican culture through urbanization and Americanization. How does the brain link the description, to the calendar, to the end of a golden-age Mexican movie? What information am I still missing? As my mind races through the possibilities, Guerrero adds, "If this is the end of the film, what preceded it?" His words are like his paintings, insisting that I find out. They expose me to the fact that there is still so much more going on that I need to know. I start to formulate an answer and he laughs, "Checkmate!" Now he's got me too involved to turn away. This is what he wants to do with his paints.

Robert Pincus, " Subtle Connections from Raul Guerrero," San Diego Union Tribune, August 1998.

"A usable past": That enduring phrase belongs to Van Wyck Brooks, a key cultural historian and literary critic from the early years of this waning century. But it hasn't lost its relevance. You can imagine Raul M. Guerrero, subject of two absorbing exhibitions, embracing these same words.

History is made personal in the work of the 52-year old artist, who has called San Diego home for almost two decades. Nearly everywhere you look in his retrospective at the downtown quarters of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, or in his solo show at the Porter Troupe Gallery in Hillcrest, there's an evocation of the past — be it in renderings of an Olmec sculpture, a dying buffalo on the American plains or the ghost of early 20th century photographer Tina Modotti rising above a dinner party.

Picturing the past in and of itself is never a goal for Guerrero. Interpreting the story of the Americas is a way of understanding himself.

Mexican and American history are large concerns in Guerrero's work, because his family saga mixes both. His grandparents may have immigrated to the United States in 1890, but the link with his Mexican and Indian past (he is part Tahumara and Yacqui) is important to Guerrero's art. These shows can be taken as visual autobiography, though not in the confessional mode to which we've become accustomed in this decade of the bare-all memoir. The connection between Guerrero's life and art is subtle and, at times, covert.

His work has changed through the years. The 39 selections in his MOCA retrospective, which carries the intriguing title "Problems and Marvelous Secrets of the Indies," are ample evidence. He began his career as a conceptual artist, using found objects, photography and any other media to fulfill his vision. but for more than a decade, he's been thoroughly committed to painting. Along the way, he's cultivated an interest and talent for mosaic tile, which exhibits itself in a series of heads commanding the center of the gallery space.

Two constants persist. There's his fascination with societal symbols — Mexican, American, Indian, European or Cosmopolitan Pop. And there is his consistent search for larger spiritual and emotional truths.

At the museum, the earliest work is a reconstruction of a Yacqui devil mask, attached to a motor. Put your foot on the pedal and the mask rotates in circular fashion.

The argument of Guerrero's "Rotating Yaqui Mask" (1973) is elegant. The object isn't meant to be contemplated as a precious artifact, even if it is persuasively demonic; it was intended for use in ritual dances. Thus, the viewer can make it twirl and perform a kind of surrogate ritual. Guerrero's use of the mask is a fresh, wry slant on a conventional symbol — an it's an inspired trick he manages repeatedly in the retrospective.

He achieves it with the appearance of another Yaqui mask, in the painting "Pool of Palenque" (1985). A frog in the picture stares dumbly into space, uninterested in the sight of a mask hovering in mid-air and surrounded by butterflies. But the mask, looking every bit a mystical apparition, is the central attraction for the viewer — underscoring the point that man is the creature who thirsts for spiritual meaning in the universe while the rest of nature is content with being part of nature.

Cinematic dimension: Guerrero takes a cliche-burdened icon, like the musician in a sombrero serenading a reclining senorita, and gives it a quirky kind of poignancy by lending it a cinematic dimension in "Little by Little" (1993) Superimposed words read: "Fin/Es una pelicula mexicano en Mexiscope," as if this were the last image in a movie. And the theme created through the artist's wedding words and picture: The movie is old, a relic of another era, and so is the Mexico this picture embodies. And yet the artist, a Romantic himself, is drawn to the idealized world this image represents, even if it's one more visual fiction.

Even when Guerrero ventures into the contemporary world, the past is present. "Streets of Mexico City" (1993 -98), the most generously represented series in his museum exhibition, derives from an extended stay in that metropolis. But the people in these paintings can't seem to elude the past.

The specter of photographer, silent film actress and revolutionary Tina Modotti haunts a dinner party in the first of these 12 scenes. In the second, tourists are taking a snapshot of a contemporary sculpture, but the ancient statue standing behind them looks as if it is about to come to life. In the 10th, a pair of guys in cowboy garb are talking about a mural picturing a bygone era, and the native Mexican in the scene looks much like them; past and present are intimately linked, Guerrero here insists.

Painting the past: Being able to retrace Guerrero's development as a painter is a major pleasure of this show. "Pool of Palenque" is a beginning point, but like other works from that series (not seen here) it's remarkably mature in terms of craft and composition.

Only a year earlier, in 1984, he had spent several months in Oaxaca teaching himself to paint with oils. But Guerrero was already an accomplished draftsman. Early silk prints from 1980 reveal his skill with line.

This exhibition leaves no doubt that Guerrero has extended his range as a painter since the 80's. The museum's assistant curator, Toby Kamps, organizer of the show, plays to the artist's strengths when he includes three paintings from Guerrero's brilliant series, "The Conquest of the Americas" (1995).

In each, the artist paints the same reclining nude — borrowed from Velasquez's "Venus of the Mirror" from 1649-1651. Venus admiring herself in the looking glass becomes a sort of metaphor for the Spanish explorer, so admiring of his own culture and so disdainful of the indigenous ones. And the route traced on her body becomes a wonderfully concise representation of the way the land has been conveyed as a woman, to be tamed and exploited.

Another of Kamp's judicious choices is "Reign of Gold" (1992) is a beautifully layered image in which an Olmec sculpture, its belly lined with coins, is the most prominent sight. Lurking in the background is a scene from the 1660 wedding of Spanish princess Maria Theresa and French king Louis XIV.

Guerrero presumes a bit of knowledge here. The wedding marked a power shift in the Americas, which increased French and diminished Spanish influence. ( A wall label fills you in.) But the larger subject is the pursuit of wealth through colonization that left indigenous cultures out in the cold.

Kamp isn't as astute, however, with the weaker "Streets of Mexico" series, which would have benefited from a smaller representation. And having less of that work could have made room for more from his 1985 Oaxaca and the Tijuana night-life paintings, which deserve larger samplings.

Sumi brush painter: "The Great Plains" at the Porter Troupe Gallery, Guerrero's first solo show in three years, finds him circling back toward a subject he tackled in the early '90's: the settlement of the West. More specifically, this exhibition is about the waxing of American culture and the waning of American Indian societies in the 19th century.

The strongest paintings in this wide-ranging show feature buffaloes. Three years ago, he said, "I want the paint to flow the way a Sumi brush painter's would." And in the panoramic oil and sand on linen "Buffalo Hunt: Catlin" (1997) Guerrero does just that.

A second painting, its image also borrowed from a famous 19th-century photograph by George Catlin, is a searingly mournful image of a single creature, its face dripping with blood and his eyes fully cognizant of his coming end.

Nearly all the images are borrowed from Catlin and a pair of other 19th -century observers of Indians and the intersection of Indians and Europeans - painters Karl Bodmer and Earl Jacob Miller. In most of them, there is too little transformation and too much borrowing, even if they are deftly painted. Guerrero hasn't made the past personal in most of these pictures which is the hallmark of his strongest work.

Still, one uneven exhibition doesn't diminish Guerrero's achievement. Taken together these shows chronicle an artist who has found a way to bring history to life and bring his history to life.

This is a retrospective worth doing and the second floor of the Museum of Contemporary art's downtown space is a fine venue for it. But as with last summer's survey for Jay Johnson, there's one glaring omission: no exhibition catalog. A show of this scope and importance in an artist's career shouldn't be without one. The museum does itself and Guerrero a disservice by not offering an accompanying publication to its audience.

"Location/Location/Location: The Travel Journals of Artist Raul Guerrero on View at the Athenaeum," La Prensa San Diego, September 2001.

Between September 22 and October 27, visitors to the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library's gallery will enjoy a very special journey. The title describes it closely: Location/Location/Location; The Travel Journals of Raul Guerrero/Paintings, Drawings, Prints, Photographs, Artist's Books, 1972-2001.

In this exhibition, San Diego multi-media artist Raul Gue-rrero draws from a body of his work spanning almost thirty years to create a visual narrative expressing aspects of transition and movement, in a variety of media.

First the paintings. In what the artist describes as a "journey of thoughts," the paintings follow the paths of two travelers through time and space. The first journey begins in the 12th century, and takes the traveler on a land journey from South America, through Central America, and Mexico, ending up in Southern California, circa 2000. The second traveler leaves Independence, Missouri (a major departure point for the Far West circa 1832), and journeys through the plains of the Midwest, the Black Hills of South Dakota, and crosses the rocky Mountains... before arriving in Southern California.

In Location/Location/Location, Raul Guerrero will display components of a lengthy and ongoing project. In fact, he describes the exhibition as "the umbrella I'm working under with my current artwork." He goes on to explain, "The work in the show is a collection of images reflecting my impression of various locales I have visited... but also impressions of places that I have imagined."

In addition to the paintings, the exhibition also includes drawings, prints, and artist's books depicting his travels to Mexico, Spain, Nicaragua, Berlin, New York, Tanjier, Paris, and other... locations. Much of the work —both early and recent— has never been shown.

Raul Guerrero was born in Brawley, California, and grew up in National City, before receiving a BFA from the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. He has been a major artistic presence in San Diego for the last twenty years. Recently, his work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; and he was part of the exhibition, "Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity 1900-2000" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His work is found in public collections, including those of MOCA, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the Phoenix Museum of Art. In addition to his almost limitless range of traditional media, Guerrero is noted for his many public art projects, both in San Diego County and other locations in Southern California.

Yvette tenBerge, "San Diego Artist Explores History of the American Continent," La Prensa San Diego, 14 June 2002.

A pale-skinned Venus is lounging across a bed and gazing into a mirror propped up by a precocious cupid. Scrawled across the goddess’ backside is the word “PERU” and a black, dotted trail that marks the path taken by Francisco Pizarro during his bloody invasion of this South American country in the 1500s.

This piece, entitled “Peru: Francisco Pizarro, 1524 - 1533,” is one of 36 selections in Raúl Guerrero’s most recent exhibition, which he loosely calls “a history of the Hispanic and Anglo cultures in the Americas.” This exhibit, which is housed in North Park’s hybrid, a gallery located at 3813 Ray Street, is part of a three-part project that took this well-known, San Diego artist more than a decade to complete.

Mr. Guerrero paces before gouache and pastel images of a Native American warrior, a shipwrecked soldier, an outlaw from the Old West and a woman draped in Incan jewelry, before delving into the evolution of his latest series.

“For about ten years I have examined the history of the American continents, and it evolved gradually into a three-part project,” says Mr. Guerrero. “The first part examines the history of Latin America, the second part examines the history of European America and the third part examines the way in which the first two parts converge in Southern California in contemporary time.”

Mr. Guerrero, 56, was raised in National City, and he believes that his “interest in identity” stems, in part, from his childhood, a great deal of which was spent traveling throughout the Southwest with his parents, both of whom labored in the fields as itinerant farm workers.

When discussing his origins Mr. Guerrero does not simply state his birthplace (Brawley, California) or his ethnicity. Jumping back in time, he paints a portrait of a courageous, uneducated grandfather who left the Mexican state of Coahuila for the United States at the age of 13, and a refined grandmother who was raised in Northern Mexico by a Mexican mother and a French father.

“My mother and father met at a farm labor camp up in the San Joaquin Valley. Here’s this really great looking woman, and you have this guy, my father, who’s an Indian,” says Mr. Guerrero. “When they got together it was dynamite.”

“I’ve always found the issue of choice to be very important. My choice is to examine the culture that we live in rather than doing ‘art for art’s sake.’ I came from a culture where narrative is so strongly embedded,” says Mr. Guerrero, listing “musical forms” and “storytelling” as examples. “This probably affects the way I see things.”

Mr. Guerrero did not simply recreate existing textbook images of times, places and people while on his latest quest. Each of his colorful pieces includes elements from vastly different centuries and continents. Strip away the costumes or jewelry worn by each subject, and the viewer could very well be looking at the face of a 21st century neighbor.

Toby Kamps has been the Curator for the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCA) for more than four years. He recalls his first introduction to Mr. Guerrero, whom he identifies as “one of the great artists” living and working in San Diego, back in 1998. The MCA housed the exhibit: “Raúl M. Guerrero: Problemas y Misterios Maravillosos de los Indios.”

“I especially love the sense of romance and intrigue that Raúl Guerrero captures, and the sense of smoky glamour present in all of his work,” says Mr. Kamp, who describes Mr. Guerrero as a “master draftsman” who possesses an “elegant, loose representational painting style.” “He is always drawing out history and looking for the humor and drama in it.”

Stephen Sears and Leslie Ryan recently opened the hybrid in hopes of creating an exhibition space that targets emerging and mid-career artists. Although Ms. Ryan has known Mr. Guerrero since 1987, Mr. Sears only recently became familiar with his work. He highlights the diversity of the manner in which Mr. Guerrero executes his pieces.

“Some are meticulously rendered, while others have an extraordinary economy of line and detail. Raúl is telling a complicated story, but he is finding common threads by shifting time and geography,” says Mr. Sears. “He is visually describing very solemn moments in history, yet he is able to do it with a humor and lightness that is very accessible.”

Ms. Ryan points to “Trade Secrets of the C.I.A.: The Che Guevara File” as a selection that holds the “key to the significance” of Mr. Guerrero’s exhibit. At first glance, these nine ink drawings resemble little more than enlarged, comic book-like portrayals of incidents in the life of a revolutionary icon. Take a closer look, however, and it becomes evident that each, individual drawing raises timeless questions about mankind.

“The ‘Trade Secrets’ indicates that the pressures of migration, colonization and economics that formed the Americas are not static,” says Ms. Ryan. “We are still in a constant ebb and flow of exploitation, infiltration and exploration.”

After explaining the significance behind most of his pieces, Mr. Guerrero stops at these nine drawings. He points to a portrait he calls “The Blind Man,” and recounts his interaction with this man in Managua, Nicaragua back in 1990.

While drawing in the “largest, dustiest and poorest” central market place he has ever seen in Latin America, Mr. Guerrero came across Felix Alberto Padilla, a “blind man wearing torn, red pants.” He had bare feet and an unshaven face.

“He asked me where I was from, and I answered Los Angeles, as generally most people there don’t recognize San Diego. Upon my saying this, his face lit up. He asked if I knew his cousin Hilda Cabresta, who lived in Los Angeles,” says Mr. Guerrero, who laughs softly when recalling Mr. Padilla’s question. “I explained to him that Los Angeles was a pretty large place, but his innocence of the world touched me, and I also began to wonder about the immigrant Hilda Cabresta in Southern California.”

Six California artists explore the many sides of a woman in the Cannon Gallery's upcoming exhibit "Painted Ladies."

Although all of the featured artists ---- four women and two men ---- specialize in depicting women on canvas, exhibit curator Karen McGuire said she selected each of them because they approach their subject in different ways.

"They all paint women in their work, but I was looking for artists who are distinctly different from each other," said McGuire, Cannon's gallery coordinator.

McGuire dreamed up the idea for "Painted Ladies" after seeing paintings of women at leisure (by the pool, on the golf course) by Los Angeles artist D.J. Hall in an L.A. gallery.

"I thought she'd be great in Carlsbad," McGuire said. "There's a lot of interest in her work connected to our community; we're close to the beach and sun, and her paintings are always sun-saturated images."

From there, McGuire thought of pairing Hall's work with that of San Diego artist Raul Guerrero, who is known for his series of paintings of Tijuana prostitutes, and the name "Painted Ladies" was born.

However, none of Guerrero's prostitute paintings will be shown in "Painted Ladies." Instead, McGuire chose three of his large-scale, 80-by-108-inch paintings that re-create film stills from the golden age of Mexican cinema and are influenced by Spanish painter Diego Velazquez. "Raul puts his women on a pedestal in exalted positions," she said.

Palo Alto artist Lucy Gaylord's work was included in the show, McGuire said, for her imaginative juxtapositions of women and images from art history. "She creates tiny, 9-by-8-inch paintings and uses brushes with one or two hairs in them. Stylistically they're similar to the other artists, but she interjects interesting elements into her paintings with amazing detail."

Another Bay area artist in the show, Inez Storer, paints images from her own life. Her painting collages include images and memories from her childhood, though they're not specifically self-portraits.

Like Guerrero, the exhibit's only other male artist, James Strombotne of Laguna Beach, idealizes women in his paintings. "His women are iconic," McGuire said. "They're not the sort of women you'd see every day. They represent the ideas of women in various poses, like a woman at a bath, a woman leaning against a wall."

Finally, Malibu artist Kim McCarty completes the sextet as the exhibit's only watercolorist. Her work combines images of awkward, vulnerable young girls with colorful, detailed still lifes from her own life.

"Painted Ladies" opens Sunday and runs through July 29. At 7 p.m. Tuesday, Guerrero will discuss his work in a free lecture at the gallery, and at 3 p.m. July 24, Hall will lecture on her work.

Peter Frank, "ARTPICKS," L.A. Weekly, 17 May 2006.

Robert Pincus, (Excerpt from) "Exhibition's pieces diverse, like Tijuana itself, " San Diego Union Tribune, May 2006.

Exhibition's pieces diverse, like Tijuana itself: 'Strange New World: Art and Design from Tijuana” isn't the first exhibition to look at the burgeoning cultural production of this shape-shifting city. But it is by far the biggest. Curator Rachel Teagle has chosen 41 artists, designers, filmmakers and artists whose 150 works fill much of the La Jolla locale of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and all of its downtown quarters.

The title of the exhibition is a shade misleading. Not all of the work is generated in Tijuana. Raul Guerrero's richly atmospheric painting dominated by blues and greens, “Club Guadalajara by Night” (1989), is about Tijuana, but he's a longtime San Diego artist. Salomon Huerta, a Tijuana native, grew up and came of age as an artist in Los Angeles. In fact, the pair of canvases on view are elegantly deadpan renderings of houses in once prosperous and now modest L.A. suburbs. His inclusion is a stretch.

But in the end it seems petty to worry about whether one or another artist actually possesses a Tijuana address. The real issue is the city itself, as social force or muse – and whether the exhibition gives us a sense of its expanding life as an arts center. “Strange New World,” curated by Rachel Teagle, does just that.