Bad Eggs 2009

In 1962 Rachael Carson published her book "Silent Spring".  The book argued that uncontrolled and unexamined pesticide use was harming and even killing not only animals and birds, but also humans. Its title was meant to evoke a spring season in which no bird songs could be heard, because they had all vanished as a result of pesticide abuse(Wikipedia).  I never read "Silent Spring", but what I knew about the book sank deep, then lodged permanently in my unconscious.  I would have been a young teen at the time the book came out, and even as unconscious as a teenager can be, I remember being frightened and worried by what the book was implying. 

Years rolled by, the environmental movement waxed and waned, and my level of anxiety about the environment waxed and waned with it, especially as I had other things to worry about.  Then, in 2004, I found that my process of making images had changed, and what I had to say changed with it.  My images went from being deeply personal to being more about the world around me.  And, as it turned out, I was back to being pretty worried about what we, as humans, were doing to our world.

Bob with Spotted Dog 1984

When I first met my husband, Bob, he was applying to medical school and not having much luck.  In the interim, between refusals, he took more chemistry classes, and also got a job at the Emergency Animal Clinic in Albuquerque.  He had decided that he would apply to veterinary school instead, and this job would give him the experience(and recommendations) he needed.  

It was a strange job.  It was available to people when their normal veterinary clinics were closed, so Bob worked late night shifts, helping the veterinarian on call with whatever needed to be done.  Because of this experience, Bob gained a certain expertise, especially since, at times, the vets would allow him to do procedures.  One time he set the broken leg of a cat whose owners couldn't pay, and he brought her home to be our cat. He began to have a basic idea of how to take care of the different ailments and injuries that came in. Mostly though, he did the dirty work:  cleaning cages, bagging the bodies of the ones that didn't make it, holding struggling animals down for procedures. However,  my unconscious knew what was going on, and I started to understand  that Bob was a healer, the real deal. I began making paintings of him taking care of living things, and really,  I have never stopped.

Awkward Man Dancing 1996

Many of my images have been portraits of friends or people I meet that I find visually interesting.  Except for my husband and my daughters (and a few other kind and brave souls), people are usually not overly excited about what I do to them, and in certain cases, my paintings have aroused anger and confusion for the subjects of these portraits. I would make the image, show it to the person with great excitement and anticipation, knowing that they were going to love this painting as much as I did.  Then I would  watch their faces as they looked away or laughed uncomfortably.  By now I've learned to show people these portraits very casually, so that when they do look away we don't have to attach much importance to it.

This portrait is of a good friend and colleague, James Baker, who I have know for over 25 years.  I first met Jim when he invited me to do a workshop at Anderson Ranch in Colorado http://www.andersonranch.org/workshops/courses/faculty_search.php  . When I did this image I was trying to get at something that I knew about Jim that I don't think I could have articulated until I did the painting:  Jim is a very smart and very capable man, but I think his strongest, most wonderful quality is his honesty.  Truman Capote once talked about a man who was the same on the outside as he was on the inside, and that's what I always felt about Jim.  The way it translated visually is that the figure has a quality of awkwardness, or goofiness, a reflection of that honesty.  He is one of those people whose laugh makes you laugh because it's such an unexpected sound, loud and funny. Most of us work hard at trying to hide those parts of ourselves that are different or not acceptable. So to know someone like Jim is truly a gift.

Being Held Upside Down 2009

When I was putting this piece together, I was not sure if I could keep it the way it was.  It scared me a little.  Both figures use my head, and the hanging figure has my hands, so, a self portrait of sorts.  Before I glue everything down, I can put in different elements to see how they look, so I took the big head out and tried lots of variations.  However, I kept coming back to my head being the "right" one.  When I had adhered everything, and it was finished, I asked my youngest daughter, Teal, what she thought, or more specifically, if she thought it was too much. Her answer was immediate, and perfect.  She said she thought the image was about what we do to ourselves, about a bigger part of us that always wants to find something wrong, turning ourselves upside down. I realized she was exactly right. I felt  good about having made the decision to leave it the way it needed to be, disturbing or not.

After the Blast 1984

As a fairly young child, I carried around quite a bit of anxiety about the world ending.  It was the fifties, smack dab in the middle of the cold war.  We were meant to be reassured by being given cheery news clips to watch about hiding under our school desks in case of a nuclear bomb detonating, the infamous, "duck and cover".  But I was no fool.  I knew from watching other news clips and listening to what my parents said to each other what would really happen when they dropped the bomb.

What I would do if it hit(and according to my friends, since we lived near the Los Alamos National Labs, we would be sure to be a target) while I was at school?  How would I get home since we lived ten miles from the city center, way to far for a nine year old to walk. What about my family?  Would they be able to make it home?  Probably not.  The pets--what about them?  If they could be enticed to join us in our crawl space under the house(where my stepfather kept a large bag of pinto beans just in case), would we then have to eat them as our food got scarce?  Could I put bits of our dog Robbie in my mouth and swallow, or my beloved black gelding, Rio Grande?  Who would do the killing?  Would I be expected to participate?  And then later, what would be left?  How would I get to my friend Jennifer's house to make sure she was okay?  There were no good answers to any of my questions and I was left to worry my way through the rest of my childhood, always waiting for that big, awful, shoe to drop.

Big Girl 2009

The year following my graduate studies at Arizona State University in Tempe, I was chosen to be an Artist-in-the-Schools.  It meant that I was given a studio and a monthly stipend and in return I would teach a certain number of art classes per week.  I taught all of the grades in their system, from kindergarten to mid-school. The mid-schoolers made me nervous and the really little kids, six on down, were just too young for me to engage.  However, I delighted in the rest of the ages:  I was a hero just by walking in the door with the label of artist, and could do no wrong in their eyes.  I came up with various projects that we worked on together, but really, I was just one artist surrounded by many.

I had a class that has always stood out in my mind and that's because of one little boy.  He sat with his desk facing the wall, clearly separated from the other children.  As we started to work, and I went around helping each child, I noticed that he was perspiring profusely. He had a heavy, dank, little boy odor about him and his clothes seemed not quite clean.  He gave his drawing all of his attention and focus.  When he finished, and I came around to look at what he had done, I was staggered by his image.  It was of a house and a child, but the child was much bigger than the house, and the child was leaning over, a stream of vomit coming from his mouth.  It was a beautiful drawing-- profound and honest and just very well done.  I praised him and told him what a great drawing I thought he had done, and he beamed back at me.  He knew I was being sincere, and he knew that I saw what he had done and heard what he was trying to say-that there was big trouble in his life. 

Later, when the class went out for recess, I showed the drawing to the teacher.  She couldn't say much to me, but I understood that this child wasn't in a good situation, and that she was doing the best she could to help.  I wasn't telling her anything she didn't know.  I left that day, and of course, I never knew what happened to the little boy.  I can only hope that his art helped him through his life, and gave him the connection he needed to somehow make it in a hard and unforgiving world.

Long Journey 2006

If Mary and Joseph were to show up with their mule today, on their way to Bethlehem, they would find a very different world, one that was mostly urban.  Although the baby Jesus would be riding safely inside Mary, she would reflect today's gray, grim world, graffiti decorating her robes and the world around her.   Joseph's robes would be made, not from soft cotton, but from impenetrable material--torn and twisted corrugated iron.  The mule would be calm and placid, the same, since animals haven't changed their nature over the centuries, but his blanket would advertise his passenger, just as buses and taxis  do today. Their journey would be lonely and full of anxiety, and they would probably end up in a parking garage in downtown Bethlehem, waiting nervously for their baby to be born.