Pinturas de El Emigrante/Paintings by El Emigrante

Cover detail from Algo Adentro/Something Inside. Art by Marek Bennett and El Emigrante.

Pinturas de El Emigrante/Paintings of El Emigrante will be on display at the Brownell Library in Essex Junction, VT from April 6 - June 30, 2023. The exhibit is viewable during normal library hours.

In 2005 the painter known as El Emigrante crossed the US/Mexico border and traveled to Vermont. Here he began work on a dairy farm, earning money to send to his family back home. He started making art several years after he arrived as a way to alleviate his feelings of isolation and loneliness while separated from them.

“El arte que elaboro, son fragmentos de paisajes imaginadas. Los pinto porque me da alegría y me retroalimenta el espíritu al pintar la belleza del campo.”

“The pieces of art I create are fragments of imagined landscapes. I paint them because it gives me happiness and it feeds my soul to paint the beauty of the countryside.”

- El Emigrante

El Emigrante is one of the people featured in this year's Vermont Reads book, the Vermont Folklife publication The Most Costly Journey. The exhibit presents a selection of El Emigrante's paintings and a display of his story from the comic, “Algo Adentro/Something Inside.”

Presented by the Open Door Clinic and Vermont Folklife. Sponsored by Vermont Humanities.

Part of Vermont Reads 2022.