The paintings by Donald Saaf now on view at Rice Polak Gallery in Provincetown depict a man watering a garden, a couple seated at a kitchen table, a woman selling flowers. Saaf painted them last winter in Yucatán, Mexico, and although the activities are familiar to a New England viewer, they’re also distinctly foreign. The artist relies on his powers of imagination and observation to create mystical paintings featuring palms, agaves, and birds not found in this hemisphere.

He first visited Mexico on a travel scholarship in 1989 after graduating from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he specialized in painting and printmaking. “It was really eye-opening how integrated the arts and music are in daily life in Mexico,” he says. “I was inspired by the simpleness of the art and the element of magic realism.”

After returning from Mexico, Saaf taught elementary school and high school. He lives in Cherryville, Maine, where he pursues a range of creative interests. In addition to painting, he has written and illustrated children’s books. He’s also a musician, and when his two sons were young, he produced music for puppet shows that he and his former wife performed in Brattleboro, Vt., where they lived for 28 years. More recently, he illustrated Broken Wing, a novel by David Budbill.

The vibrant arts community of Brattleboro was good to Saaf. He met Marla Rice of Rice Polak Gallery through Paul Bowen, an artist who lived in Provincetown but is now based in Vermont. Saaf has exhibited with Rice for more than 15 years. In 2023, he had a solo exhibition, “Peaceable Kingdom,” at the Cahoon Museum of American Art in Barnstable.

That same year, Saaf returned to Mexico for the first time since 1989. After some significant life changes — including a cancer diagnosis, a new marriage, and a move to Maine — he and his wife visited Yucatán for some spiritual healing and a little R&R. They visited again last winter, and the place has become a source of inspiration connecting him to his first trip to Mexico. “There’s so much craziness in the world,” he says. “I am just getting back to the basics and thinking about pure painting and humanity.”

Saaf’s recent work is inspired by Mexican folk art and children’s art. During the winter of 2023-2024, he worked with children to create a mural in San Cristóbal de las Casas in the state of Chiapas. “A child can see something that you would never even notice,” he says. “I try to maintain that freshness and spontaneity that some great children’s art has.”

Saaf’s paintings explore the space where fine art and folk art intersect. He has the drawing skills of a trained artist, but he nods toward folk art in his imagery and his shallow, sometimes compressed spaces, where verdant vegetation and simplified forms suggest structures in and around the home. The scenes are idyllic and of a world where animals and people cohabit harmoniously.

Walled Garden is a prime example. It depicts a man watering trees that have colorful orbs of fruit or flowers. Two birds are poised on a birdbath like a couple, with other birds roosting in trees or flying about. Implicit sounds are the spray of water from the hose, bird calls, and the surrounding hum of nature on a warm afternoon. The titular wall occupies the background behind an expanse of lawn. It stretches the full length of the canvas. The yard it contains is separate from its surroundings. The distancing of the outside world is an implicit theme of this painting and the exhibition as a whole.

An undercurrent of mysticism runs through Saaf’s work. “I try to capture the feeling that everything is alive,” he says. “Everything in our world has a living spirit — the birds, the leaves, the trees. I try to incorporate that idea into all my paintings.”

Birds, typically a symbol of a connection between earthly and spiritual realms, figure prominently. Though the birds are minimally rendered, they have the distinctive characteristics of specific varieties found in the Yucatán.

“It’s really incredible just sitting in the back yard, the tropical birds that come by and become a part of your life,” Saaf says. The black birds in Walled Garden are grackles, one of the more common birds there. “It started to feel like a human friend in our world,” he says.

The “Birds of the Yucatán Series” are smaller paintings on panel depicting birds posed upright like humans. They include collage elements that read as clothing. Plain Chachalaca has a red throat like its counterpart in nature.

Mermaid is a painting Saaf made after seeing a cenote, a cave where a shaft of light illuminates the water, turning it intensely blue. Although the painting doesn’t illustrate that natural phenomenon, it reflects some of the color and mysticism associated with cenotes. The mermaid is another being that exists somewhere between a human and animal state.

In Mermaid, outlines of heads float through the space. These “bubble echoes” — subtle outlines around the heads of figures, including birds and animals — are a recurring motif in Saaf’s paintings. “It’s the idea of the expanding consciousness,” he says.

Several years ago, Saaf had what he describes as “a kundalini experience,” the awakening of a dormant spiritual energy. “It’s like when you’re meditating, you’re cycling your energy through your whole body, though the top of your head and then back down and over and over again,” he says. “The expanding head thing is the best way I can visualize it to show what it felt like.”

Staircase Home is more symbolic than mystical. The narrative elements are more reminiscent of real-life experiences. In the painting, a male figure carrying suitcases ascends stairs on his way to a house where a woman stands. The bottom step coincides with the bottom of the canvas, an extension into the viewer’s space. The stairs are suspended in the sky, and outlines around the head of the male figure reverberate through the composition, amplified by swirling birds. Is it love as expanding consciousness emanating from the man? Is he returning home from distant travels? At the same time, his ascension evokes the word “heavenly.”

“Paintings have a life of their own,” Saaf says. “A painting is really successful when I am able to just step out and let some interior force speak for me.”

 

A Walled Garden

The event: Paintings from the Yucatán by Donald Saaf
The time: Through July 30; opening reception Friday, July 18, 7 p.m.
The place: Rice Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St., Provincetown
The cost: Free