Photographs by Dick Evans
The main elements of inspiration for the diptych mural “Family Life” and “Spirit of Mankind” were the 70-year-old acacia trees in Precita Park directly across the street from the mural. Trees of life and spirit emerge as the central elements around which everything else moves. In the panel on the left the tree has been painted with 7 multicolored branches and 7 multicolored blossoming flowers: 7 being symbolic of the 7 color rays of the sun, the 7 musical tones, the 7 days of the week, the 7 planets and so on. The tree in the right panel if the same 7 branched tree but reversed, and the truck is white in order to represent the purity of the soul. The branches are the fire of the spirit reaching upward from the initial spark in the center of the mural and shooting out above the frame if the mural panel.
The family is depicted in the center of the Left Panel as beginning with a man and a woman. Above them in the boughs of the tree are the ages of our life cycle: birth, childhood, old age, and death. The family is represented in the Right Panel by the familiar faces and everyday life of the neighborhood people around Precita Park.
Source: Susan Cervantes, Precita Eyes