Mexico's True Colors

It was enough to make a serious painter swoon.

El Centro of Art

San Miguel has an authenticity that belies its large gringo presence. Founded on a hillside in 1542, designated a national monument in 1926 and now a city of nearly 100,000, its intimate, historic El Centro seems to be caught in a time warp. There are no stoplights, fire hydrants, neon, billboards, skateboarders or condos.

Mexican culture seeps from the old stone and terra cotta buildings. A former convent is an arts center; an ancestral villa houses the Instituto Allende, which cleverly opened its doors in the 1950s to students studying on the GI Bill and thus initiated the artistic pilgrimage that exists today.

The city smells old -- earthy and dusty with a hint of burro dung, sweetened by the scent of geraniums or jasmine wafting over a garden wall. It sounds ancient. There are more than 20 Catholic churches, many with active bell towers that fill the air -- morning, noon and all night -- with a joyful, ancient cacophony.

Fireworks, festivals and parades are commonplace, as there is always something to celebrate -- a saint's day, a wedding, a national holiday. The hurly-burly Mercado Ignacio Ramirez anchors the community's commerce, dispensing everyday essentials: fresh nopales paddles (edible cactus), pomegranate seeds, calla lilies, free-range chickens, garlic braids, sombreros.

The Jardin, shaded by flat-topped laurel trees and scrubbed every morning by a crew wielding buckets of soapy water and brooms, is San Miguel's outdoor theater and senior social center. Missing are the young waif jewelry-makers and dreadlocked musicians you see selling their wares and talents in other well-trafficked destinations. It's an older crowd.

Iron benches and lampposts give the park a European feel. You can get your shoes shined here, sign up for a walking tour, buy a bag of popcorn or the International Herald Tribune. On weekends, there are bands, and canoodling sweethearts and children can take a horsy ride . . . on a real horse.

And on every street corner, behind the many garden walls, in fountain-dancing courtyards, secluded alleys, jostling markets and terraced rooftops, there is an easel or a sketchbook or a camera and an artist absorbed in recording this storybook scene.

"Our task," said portrait artist Amy Varner, 49, of Charlottesville, painting in the Jardin early one morning, "is to put it all together and make these paintings images that are compelling universally, not postcard paintings."

Those cliche images attract an estimated 10,000 visitors to San Miguel annually; 5,000 North Americans live there full time. "It seems everyone in San Miguel is an artist," said Dawn Gaskill, a painter who moved there four years ago from Dallas and recently had an opening at the Dallas Museum of Art. "I would say that even if they don't personally have a creative endeavor, they choose to live their life creatively by moving here."

"The beauty of San Miguel alone is enough to awaken any dormant muses," said Patrice Wynne, a photographer from Berkeley who moved to San Miguel several years ago and is now a full-time resident.

It was hard to plant an easel on a street corner and not get a tourist in the picture.