Carnival Fantasies.

Carnival Fantasy Study

Manuel Macarrulla

Charcoal, 1977

30 1/4" X 41 1/8"

These two charcoal studies I did while still a student at The University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Fine Arts.  I did them in a period in which I was making personal breakthroughs in iconography. As a consequence of my first return to the Dominican Republic since having left there at the age of 10, I had discovered Dominican places and things as subject matter, and found that images based on, or inspired by Dominican carnival costumes, in particular, captivated me.  That led to the first series of images with which I could identify both on a personal level and in terms of cultural significance.

Bloody Horn, Dominican Smile, Study

Manuel Macarrulla

Charcoal, 1977

29 3/4" X 34 3/4"

The two studies are not only crudely executed, but show my unawareness of such things as archival materials at that time.  Both are done on poor quality craft paper, and were not carefully stored for many years. But they do show the awareness I had begun to gather about the role of consistent focus in communication, and the organization of subjects unencumbered by extraneous matter.  Having found these two studies again I now value them as evidence of an exciting period of discovery for me.