Author: miguel

El Toro Embolado – Oil/canvas – 26 x 32 inches

“Here are three dangers to your life, Miguel: horns, hooves and fire.” Paco was telling me a story I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear.

“A year ago, I was on duty at the clinic when they brought in the first victim. He was a young guy wearing a football jersey. The flames had melted the shirt to his back. I had to listen to his screams as I cut away strips of shirt and skin with my forceps and scissors.”

“Would you like to meet a bull with fiery horns?” Paco had asked. Yes, but I thought I would meet it from the safety of a balcony.

“The guy was lucky to lose only skin. The year before, a Belgian tourist got too close. He got gored and trampled and died in the hospital. Local or foreigner, the bull doesn’t care.”

No balcony for us. We stood side-by-side in a crowd of men in the plaza when they clamped metal baskets of some flammable stuff to the horns. “Miguel, stay next to me and never, never get near the bull.” Two men lit the fires and set the bull free. We all scattered like rabbits.

Runners chased the bull through the streets and in turn it chased us. Paco and I got separated. I stopped, lost and panting, and suddenly the horns and fires were right in front of me.

I could smell the bull’s breath and I knew it could smell my fear. Paco yelled from a distance, “Miguel!” then in desperation, “Mike!” The bull turned away from me to chase other runners.

Paco and I trudged out of the village in silence. He refused to even look at me. I didn’t blame him. Later he forgave me and my hubris for ignoring his warnings and putting my life in danger; had I been hurt or killed he would have felt the fault was his.

Years later I painted this portrait of the bull. Now it hangs in the home of the mayor of the village. But the bull who spared me is still in me.

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More images on my website: johnmichaelkeating.com

Fiesta in Muros de San Pedro – Oil on canvas – 30 x 44 inches.

When the Romans reached the Atlantic Ocean, the western edge of their expansion into Spain, they called the peninsula, “finis terrae,” the end of the earth. Muros is a beautiful harbor town only a few miles to the south, and like many fishing ports, its patron saint is Peter the Apostle. Every year at the end of June, the inhabitants celebrate the saint’s feast day with concerts, masses, a parade, fireworks and dances.

If I had painted the fiesta “realistically,” this couple would be surrounded by dozens of other dancers. But I subtracted everyone else to emphasize the beautiful feeling that when we dance with someone we love deeply, we often feel that we are the only two people that exist in this world. These lovers could be holding each other anywhere, but at the moment, they know they are alone and dancing at the end of the earth.

The only other couple is the little girl, who is fascinated by the musicians, and the boy who ignores her to play his air guitar. Perhaps they are younger versions of the lovers. Perhaps they too will one day dance together and feel that they are in love, deeply, here in a fiesta at the end of the earth.

More images and reflections on my website: johnmichaelkeating.com

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The Mórrígan and Cúchulainn – watercolor – 7 x 10 inches

Once upon a time, a goddess decided to appear as a crow and alight on the cradle of a warrior. Why, we wonder, do divinities bother to manifest themselves in human or animal forms? There is no answer: They are divine and so they do as they wish. It is left to us to deal with the results.

The Mórrígan is a goddess of war-fury and battle-death, an ominous figure in the world of the ancient Celts. The infant is Cúchulainn. In stories of ancient Ireland, he is the ultimate warrior hero.

During his short life he will encounter her in many forms — most importantly years later when she appears as a lovely girl in a flowery dress and offers herself to him. He ignores her and says he is busy with wars and has no time for “women’s behinds.”

Naturally, she resolves to kill him. “It will be worse for you when I go against you as you are fighting against your enemies. I shall go in the form of an eel under your feet in the ford so that you shall fall… I shall drive cattle over the ford to you while I am in the form of a wild she-wolf… I shall come to you in the guise of a heifer… yet you will not see me in front of you.”

Still he ignores her, too young perhaps to realize that he is no match for her, no matter how powerful he is — or thinks he is.

In his last battle, he ties himself to a pillar stone so he can die standing up. Of her thoughts as she perches on his shoulder to watch him leave this world, we don’t know. Nor his thoughts. So we’re left with our own.

What would happen if we said “yes” to divine beings? Eve says yes to the serpent; Dr. Faustus says yes to Mephistopheles; Job says yes to the angel. What if we said yes to forces greater than ourselves?

As Rainer Maria Rilke ends Der Schauende:

“Winning does not tempt that man.
This is how he grows; by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.”

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More images on my website: johnmichaelkeating.com