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.

Dancing Shoes 2024

For the past two years I have been finding homes for my paintings.  Fifty years of working on a regular basis creates a lot of work. I've been contacting museums, art centers, and universities to see if they would like to add my work to their collections, and, once they agree, I began the arduous process of locating, packing, and shipping the work to them. As well, in March of this year,  MOPA at the San Diego Museum of Art opened a 40 year retrospective of my work. An enormous undertaking, it pretty much consumed me for much those two years.  Between the two, and because it hadn't seemed quite right to make more art when I had so much, I pretty much stopped working for the years 2022 and 2023. 

However, when you identify as an artist, you don't feel right not making work. You feel a phony-you ARE a phony.  So, with much fear and trepidation I started working again, pretty much sure that all that magic I call on when I make my images was gone.  In fact, I was sure of it.  Why even bother?  But with shaking knees and a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach I put on my painting shoes and began to paint--pouring, dripping--just basically moving(lots of) paint around.  The result was 20 beautiful abstract paintings, waiting for me to start to form "stories" on them.  And once I started,  I couldn't stop.  I felt like the little girl in the fairy tale who wished for magic shoes to dance in, and when she got them, she couldn't stop.

Powerful Woman(with Small Dogs Walking) 2024

The legs and arms are mine, the small dogs representational of our two small dogs, Niko and Sophie.  The head is from a religious painting, giving the image the proper seriousness needed.  It’s raining a dry, warm, rain, familiar to the desert we live in.  With women’s rights and privileges being eroded away, the power of this figure, with her strong arms and legs and her calm, serene face, seemed to be what I needed to show our strength and determination not to be made less.

Horse 2024

 

 Bits normally lay comfortably in the interdental space between the incisors and premolars, commonly called the “bars” of the mouth. Except when they don’t.

 

I ride three times a week:  two days in the arena and one day with a riding instructor, trying to learn the basics of dressage while also trying to teach the mare I ride, Joey, the same.  Dressage has been called the gymnastics of horseback riding, and has to do with the horse and rider learning to accommodate each other with the movements of their bodies.  If I were to compare myself to a child learning in school, I would probably put myself in the 2nd grade—the really good dressage riders would have their PhD’s.  Recently I was riding Joey when suddenly her head came up and she began to shake it violently from side to side, then violently up and down.  In the midst of this I noticed that I could see her tongue, which wasn’t right. Horse’s tongue’s are very long and very large, although we don’t usually see them unless they’re yawning. It was several minutes before I realized what was going: she had somehow managed to get her tongue over the bit instead of under it. I got off, and, with a great deal of effort, managed to remove her bridle and put it back on.  Once back on, we resumed our ride and all was fine.