Ashes to Ashes

It’s Ash Wednesday, and you will see dozens of Catholics today with smudges on their foreheads. Forty days from now, Vallarta will be overrun with Easter celebrants for Semana Santa, mixed in with Spring Breakers. It is always a joyful chaos. This is also a warning: go shopping NOW and stock up on the stuff you can’t live without from Costco and La Comer.

I had the most interesting morning yesterday. Just up the hill from me lives a painter who recently had the first showing of his lovely work at Raices, where you can still see some canvases, although sales have been made. The painter and I were acquainted through morning gym workouts a couple of years ago. We would chat briefly – he in flawless English: nothing more than niceties, but it was a surprise to learn his hobby will propel him into the realm of the best painters in the city.

When the gorgeous entrepreneur and model, Anna Gurayevskaya, favored by Mexican designer Mafud, invited me to see Lee’s home, I was thrilled to go.

Anna and I met and walked up the hill together, past Hacienda San Angel, as she told me how she came to live in Vallarta from her native Kazakhstan six and a half years ago.

Lee Moreno invited us into his four-story home under a banner of sorpresa bougainvillea. Fine art and tchotchkes are everywhere! Every surface contains a story, and Lee was happy to oblige. It would take weeks to get a proper history, and in between the history of his life on display are plants exuberantly trying to control the space. An atrium off the formal dining room is open to the sky; every part of this house Lee re-designed using his skills from years of living, studying, and working in interior design in Los Angeles.

Each floor threaded magic and light throughout the bedrooms with their spectacular bathrooms until we reached his penthouse studio. I have seen some vistas in Vallarta, but Lee’s view literally took my breath away. From fruit trees on the terrace to reclaimed objets that he loves to source from trash and give new life, I was fascinated.

Now in his early eighties, the gigantic house is becoming too big for him now that he is alone. Anna and I agreed that the house would be fantastic as a B & B or guest house of some sort.

The walls are covered with Lee’s canvases, and some walls ARE the canvas, with his bedroom done in spectacular trompe-l’œil. His studio on the top floor is full of paintings, some finished, some still needing touches. What an inspiring space! A 25-year-old hobby has become a new career.

I am grateful to Anna and Lee for the invitation to view an old Vallartan home that has been tenderly renovated by a master designer. And your paintings are wonderful, Lee. Keep at it; our paths will cross again soon, From Here.