Verano by Enrique Martínez Celaya, is an oil and wax painting on canvas completed in the year 2007. It is a landscape that stands at one hundred sixteen inches tall by one hundred fifty inches wide or, in other words, nine and half feet tall by twelve and half feet wide. For reference, a standard doorway is eight feet tall, and the height of this painting alone exceeds it by a foot and a half. ‘Verano,’ the Spanish word for summer, is part of a series of paintings by Celaya named after the four seasons. Each of these “seasons” paintings features a near-identical central image of a young girl carrying a dead leopard over her shoulders yet painted with different backgrounds. In the center of Verano, this adolescent girl bears a leopard draped across her shoulders. She wears a collared dress, painted in washes of crimson reds. The dress has long sleeves with a straight hem stopping just above her knees. The girl’s hair, pulled back into a presumed ponytail or styled short, is painted with washes of chestnut brown. Her skin is pale, if not white, and painted flatly, without too much shading or dimension. Her features are only distinguished by graphic lines painted in brown that outline her eyes, nose, mouth, ear and hands. Around the girl’s shoulders, hangs a lifeless leopard, almost as if it were a pelt or a shawl. It too, is painted flatly with a solid earthy orange, a white underbelly, and brown brushed-in spots. The girl clutches onto the leopard’s arms and legs as they dangle on either side of her petite torso. In the background, layers of translucent color create a painterly space that stands in sharp contrast to the assertive flatness of the central painting. Washes of green create tall grass, depicted with vigorous vertical brushstrokes as it covers the girl’s legs just below her knees. The grass is dotted with dandelion-like white flowers, small purple flowers, as well as incidental drips of color from nearby patches of the painting. A white path appears to divide the painting in half, as it cuts through the center of the landscape, starting from the bottom right and disappearing to the upper left behind the grass. The upper half of this grassy landscape is painted loosely and abstractly in splotches of varying shades of earthy green. This loose top half has drips of paint that cut back into the path and back into the lower half of the painting. The horizon sits at the top quarter of the painting, depicting a cloudy sky. The time of day is ambiguous, as there is an ambient source of light. The clouds appear gray, as if near dusk or perhaps just before a summer rainstorm.