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.

 

Snake with Flowers 2024

For almost two years now, I haven't really been making images.  I've been trying to find homes for my work, and also have been preparing for a retrospective exhibit at MOPA, now part of the San Diego Museum of Art( StoryTeller: Work by Holly Roberts ).  In March, I created a temporary studio in Austin, Texas, while staying there to spend time with our daughter and her young family. While there, I painted, and tried not to make too big a mess since my workspace was in the living room of the small condo we were staying in.  When we returned to New Mexico, using a panel I had painted a few years ago, I married a photograph I had taken of a small garden snake with the painting--which perfectly flowed with the rhythm of the painted surface. The flowers added to the ominous presence of the snake(walking in your garden and you discover much to your surprise a snake!), but at the same time, a beautiful juxtaposition of the two.  As I worked, I remembered just how hard it was to get an image to work, and how completely I was taken over by making the piece.  After working for six hours straight, I was tired, hungry, and what's more, had lost the cut out snake somewhere in the mess of my studio.  I found it the next morning, and, pleased, was finally able to complete the image.

Bucking Pony 2024

I ride a friends horse several times a week, and when I’m done riding I go next door to the neighbors to let out her three horses, who have been confined so that they will not eat each other’s food.  The neighbor works during the day, so I like to give them the very large horse pleasure of being in close proximity. Blixa, a pony, is one of the horses.  He is in his twenties, short and very stout, and was probably once grey but is now white.  When I let him out he races past me and charges over to the other two horses, ears pinned, teeth bared, often bucking and rearing as he charges at them.  For the most part they ignore him except for an occasional ears pinned back toss of the head; the bossy little fat boy that insists on playing with the big kids whether they want him or not.

Working March2024

 

My husband and I have been spending the month of March(last year January)in Austin, TX to spend time with our young grandson, now 3 1/2. This year I decided to set up a small studio space so that I could work while we are here. Among other things, I purchased an inexpensive black and white laser printer,  a floor lamp and a new 5 foot folding table. I brought most of my supplies from home, and after several trips to Goodwill and retrieving items from the curb, I managed to set up my space. It’s quite tight, and the main thing I find that I lack is space to spread out so that I can see what I’m doing.  I haven’t worked since fall of 2022, so basically I’m starting all over again.  How does one go about making art anyway?  Coming back to me are just how very hard it is, how much a slave I am to the process once I get going, and the doubts, fears, elation, and confusion that I go through each time I start working.  It’s much like getting back on a bucking bronco and riding until the ride is done.  What’s nice is that after more than a year of not working, I have forgotten how to do many things, which keeps it more interesting. I’m also lacking in the millions of items my studio at home provides, and I think that’s a good thing as well.

Saying Goodbye 1987

In 1987 I painted "Saying Goodbye" after a tough loss. This last week, I pulled the image out of my flat file storage, and packed it up, along with 23 other paintings that have been donated to Wright State University in Ohio(Wright State has a wonderful and unique lending program where students can check art work out for the semester from the Museum's collection).  Once again, it was difficult putting together such a large body of work and sending it off, but this particular piece was especially hard to let go of.  I think partially because I am at a time in my life where I'm saying lots of goodbyes: to my art, to parents who have passed on, to friends who have died too young, to a small dog who has been my special friend for 14 years.

 

Hummingbird(with Figure Standing) 2016

 On March 30 of this year, the Museum of Photographic Art at the San Diego Museum of Art, will present my work in a 40 year retrospective.  The exhibit, titled "Storyteller:  Works by Holly Roberts" will run until Aug. 18, and will include 59 pieces of mine created from 1980 until 2023. There will be a beautiful book to go along with the retrospective with an essay by Deborah Klochko, former director of MOPA.  At the end of the exhibit all 59 pieces will go into the permanent collection of the Museum. 

For the past several weeks, I've been preparing the work to be delivered to the museum, soft wrapping them to be picked up by art handlers and driven out. It's very bittersweet. While I'm pleased that my work will have a permanent home at the Museum, I'm sad to see the work go.  Although I sell work knowing I won't see the work again, this is 59 pieces going in one giant exit from my life.  It feels as if I'm losing  my limbs all at once--fingers, toes, arms, legs and a big chunk of my heart.