I was introduced to artist Esther Sarto when Black Dragon Press released a print of Butchershop Bliss in 2019. The painting shows a mother feeding her child amid the day’s toil of chopping meat.
It reminds me of being a teenager working in the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant. I bussed tables with a mother and daughter. We cleaned the tables and hauled tubs of dishes off the floor and into the sink. The dishwasher always took their tubs first, washed whatever they needed with priority. He was the husband and the father. They made tips on top of their hourly wage and the family drove in each morning from Oakland. I remember Paula, her face richly creased, her eyes were intense.
Rene would put on his galoshes and plastic brown apron and stand at the sink and industrial washer from opening to close. The kitchen staff ate lunch together, and on those mornings I helped in the kitchen, I was included. They spoke in Spanish and my vocabulary was tied to the kitchen—mostly paying attention to when orders were para aqui (for here) and allá (to go).
‘Butchershop Bliss’ by Esther Sarto
In Sarto’s painting, the labor is constant. The meat will rot in the open air. The knives need washing. Amongst the filth of a working kitchen, the only eyes watching this connection between mother and child is the frog. Sarto captures that moment where the labor of the day pauses and we return from butcher to mother, dishwasher to father, and from outsider to friend. Sarto excels at illuminating humanity through the visual savagery of the mother’s place of work, the butchershop.
Sarto recently shared a trio of watercolours that turns toward family. These paintings are her first in a year. Her pieces Symbiosis, Bath Time, and Nurture were inspired by her own experiences with her daughter. They are raw and dreamlike, the colors are not bound by hard lines, but share space in harmony.
‘Symbiosis’ by Esther Sarto
‘Evening Bath’ by Esther Sarto
‘Nurture’ by Esther Sarto
