La Barranca is a a rustic summer resort on the north coast of Peru. The village sits on the beach directly under an imposing bluff that juts over the sea. On the bluff is Pacatnamu, an arid and mysterious pre-Inca site, with rows of weathered pyramids and remains of ancient adobe compounds. A washboard road winds through the desert over sandy humps and down dry ditches, skirts Pacatnamu, and finally descends the bluff to La Barranca and the sea. The Humboldt Current sweeps the muddy drainage of the Jequetepeque river north. A colonial church destroyed by fire overlooks the town.

La Barranca has no utilities: no running water, no electricity, no telephone service. The people living in nearby Guadalupe, a bustling town on the Panamerican highway, bring all their supplies on overloaded trucks at the beginning of the season. In the winter, it is a ghost town of abandoned structures, the walls bleached and scuffed by the sun and sea. The town at sunset is silent and empty, its colors subdued and warm; doorways frame the intense shadows of empty rooms.

Memories of past visits and the photographs I took at La Barranca in 2006 inspired these paintings, pastels, and collages.