Diaz lived and worked in New York and had shows there before returning to San Juan. An art gallery called Mora attracted our attention. The father of the painter, whose smaller, more realistic paintings hang on another wall, says his son also has galleries in Europe and South America. He's so popular, says the father, that all but three of the paintings on view have already been sold. She runs a 22-room hotel, the Gallery Inn, on Norzagaray.
Rooms are different sizes and shapes and on different levels.
It's possible to get lost going from a bedroom to a reading room. In one bedroom without a window, d'Esopo has painted a window with a view. Rooms are decorated with paintings, silk-screens, busts, masks and bas reliefs, all for sale. Greeting people at the door is a life-size statue of an African queen, a model for one commissioned by a mall builder in Tortola, the face modeled from a picture of his wife. Two cockatoos and a macaw enliven the front patio.