Guard Dog(Abby) 2025

My mother suffered from dementia for the last 10 years of her life, through her eighties, dying just short of her ninety-first birthday.  Up until the last year she lived alone with her dog Abby. My two siblings and I did as much as we could to allow her to keep living by herself in her little house. My sister managed her finances from afar, my brother visited her every Sunday to hike and take care of things, and I called everyday to check in.  However, it was her dog, Abby, that really gave her life the most meaning.  A border collie rescue, Abby was Mom’s shadow. She was my mother’s very best friend-non judgmental and always present, never saying “You already told me that!”.  She also took advantage of mom, ferociously protecting her and nearly pulling her off her feet by yanking the leash when other dogs would get too close, and convincing my mother that she always needed more food since Mom couldn’t remember if she had fed her or not.  All seemed fine and then it wasn’t. Abby seemed lethargic for a few days and then quietly went out into the back yard and died, still a relatively young dog. Of course, Mom was heartbroken. She followed Abby that fall.

Child Dreaming 1993

I recently received this email message.  Back in 1999 or so I attended a Natalie Goldberg writing workshop in Taos, and you were a guest speaker. I was moved by your talk and your work, and purchased one of your paintings over a pinhole camera image -- a child's face, sleeping, with a coyote or wolf. It was among my favorites and sadly lost in the recent LA fires. The email broke my heart.  Not for the loss of this wonderful painting, but for the family that lost everything in the fire, one of thousands.  The painting seems almost a portent of what was to come, even though it was painted some 35 years ago: the sleeping child's face, the smokey haze of danger that lurks just beyond the dream. 

Grey Horse Walking 2025

For me, there is a kind of existential loneliness in this painting. The circular motion of the background suggests a storm, while the small clouds building above the mare give a quiet sense of foreboding.  Her head seems stoic-resigned-while her body, made partially from photographs, dictionary pages and painted paper, seems contradictory, but in fact, adds to that sense of disjointed separateness.

 

Deer Watching 2024

Lately I’ve been talking, thinking, and reading about consciousness, especially as it applies to animals.  From what I understand, consciousness is everywhere and it’s only our ability to connect with it that allows us to experience that consciousness.  I feel as if I have a screen that keeps me from connecting to that consciousness—sometimes thinner and sometimes thicker.  When I build these images I feel that I am making that screen thinner, and the materials that I have to form the heads and bodies of my animals gives me that connection.

untitled abstract 2024

My images consist of two processes: #1: paint an abstract painting #2. form an image on the surface of that painting adhering different materials including, but not limited to, my photographs.  This past week I painted 9 paintings that are somewhat different in that they are complete in and of themselves,  Which leaves me with some confusion: where is my story and where is that big connection that I make between the painting and the adhered elements?  Are these enough?  How do I title them? Does the world expect something different from me?  Were these just an "accident", and if so, can I do more? If I do form images on top of them, will they be that much more powerful or will the image take away from the paintings?  Right now they are sitting in my studio, quietly glowing, and I lay awake at night, not quite sure of what to do.

 

Welcome 2024

Juan Diego: Mexican indigenous person to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe appears for the first time. Mexican Indian born around 1474 in Cuauhtitlán, an area of ​​Texco influence, the Indian Juan was of Chichimenca origin and was baptized and educated in the Catholic faith by the Franciscans.

For much of my life, several times a year, I drive to Colorado via highway 285 which takes me through the small border town of Antonito. To the east, directly off  the highway, just before I reach the turn which will take me to Antonito sits a small chapel, dedicated to Juan Diego and the Holy Family. And even though the sign says, in commercial lettering, "Welcome Open Day Or night"  I have never gone in the chapel.  However, I have stopped to photograph it and have used these photographs in numerous paintings I have done over the years. As I was developing this image, it became clear to me that these two ordinary male figures with their bovine heads were a connection to times when animals and people were powerful magical beings.  Here they welcome us into the mystery of the chapel for the man who 650 years ago made the miraculous acquaintance of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

(I discovered this blog link when I was researching the chapel which takes you in inside Oratorio de Juan Diego y La Sagrada Familia.)

Woman Leaning Over 2024

I recently returned from teaching two one week workshops at Anderson Ranch, both combining paint and collage material.  Much of the class is teaching students different ways to add surfaces to their substrates, using photographic images, paint, or material transferred be it paint or marks or photographs or text, to name just a few.  There is something thrilling about making a painting by not just painting on the surface with a brush, but by adding to it and  not being quite sure what you are going to get. Sometimes you get magic, and sometimes not. This panel started out as a demonstration piece, and there wasn't much magic. I then proceeded to try most of the different techniques I was teaching, including using a students "pure black" paint to create the washes. Still no magic. Frustrated I kept piling technique on top of technique.  And then suddenly, there was the magic:  the student's "borrowed" black paint transformed into the figure of a woman leaning over at an impossible angle, surrounded by the beautiful chaos of the all "non-magical" marks I had made.