Yellow Dog and Blue Cat
*

Longtime San Miguel resident, painter and author, Fen Lasell, was born in Berlin, Germany in 1929. Her father was a city planner and political dissident, who, escaping the rising tide of fascism, brought his family to the United States in 1933.

At the age of ten, Fen realized she had a gift for drawing which resulted in her being put in charge of costumes and decorations at school events. As a teenager in Vermont, she rode a horse every day to the Putney School, where she developed a love of classical music and made lifelong friends.

Fen's first job was at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, making sets and costumes. This led her to study set design at Boston University. But there came a point where she knew life in the theater was not for her. She went on to study drawing and sculpture, working from live models for four intensive years.

Lillies
*

At that time another artist remarked to her that she would spend the rest of her life unlearning what she was working so hard to perfect. In fact, now, she finds this is to be true: "My aim is to lead the eye on a visual adventure. Subject becomes less important. Design, color, and composition now tend more toward abstraction."

Later, as a young mother, Fen worked from home, writing and illustrating children's books (Michael Grows a Wish, Fly Away Goose, Kiya the Gull, and others).

Once her children left home, she took her first trip to Mexico. She stayed at the Sauto Hotel and woke that first morning to five peacocks outside her door. She was captivated.

Fen was formerly on the board of the Audubon Society San Miguel and helped to organize the Botanical Gardens and to maintain the Parque Juarez in the early days.

Red Horses on a Golden Field
*

An accomplished gardener herself, Fen designed gardens for several San Miguel homes, wrote a column in La Atención, "About the Garden" in the 1990s, and published a book of the same name. During her residence in San Miguel, she has designed and built and/or renovated six of her own houses, adding intricate wall mosaics and terraced gardens to each house.

She used to hike daily in the Mexican countryside, which inspired many of her landscape paintings. Now, at 95 years old, she continues to walk and paint daily, and she dreams at night about what she is going to paint the next day. "That's when my inspiration comes to me."

Fen has been painting in San Miguel since she moved here in 1971. Her paintings have been shown in San Miguel, and in British Columbia.

www.fenspaintings.com
Instagram

Discover Lokkal:
Watch the two-minute video below.
Then, just below that, scroll down SMA's Community Wall.
Mission

Visit SMA's Social Network

Contact / Contactar