Woman with Crow 2012

 

The crow has just landed on the woman’s outstretched arm. She has a halo made from the branches of a tree in winter, filled with small birds. The crow knows he can trust this woman because of her halo. It tells him that she is safe, holy. His body is made of the feet and legs of a dead bird, but his head is alive and knowing. Like the crow, we can see inside the woman through a portal that has made her available to us. Inside are leaves and tubing--her inner workings. They are sharing something profound, a deep connectedness.

Man with Holes in the Sky 2012

 

In 1992 I had a young family: two daughters under the age of four. Things weighed heavily on me as I wondered what kind of a world my daughters would grow up in. Among other concerns, I fretted about were global warming and ozone depletion. Although I didn't really understand the concept of ozone depletion, I could picture the big holes in the sky that we‘d been warned about, and so I did a painting. Scratching into the paint at the top I wrote, "He heard on the radio that there was a hole in the sky. He didn't know what to do". The painting sold. A good sign that someone was listening. Now, twenty years later, I've done another painting with holes in the sky. We don’t hear much about ozone depletion anymore, but clearly it was something my unconscious still wanted to discuss. No text this time, but birds and trees accompany the man who looks bewildered, or, at the very least, puzzled at what has gone awry.

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Hole in the Sky, 1992

Frightened Elephant 2012

Two years ago, in the fall of 2010 I taught a workshop on solving visual problems using paint and collage.  The last day of the workshop, when everyone was cleaning up, I went around to different students and asked if I could have the paint peels from their palettes as they scraped the old paint away.  Everyone was happy to oblige, and I brought home an assortment of beautiful acrylic paint peels made by hands other than my own. One of those paint peels spoke to me of being an elephant, so I built this image.

I've written earlier in this blog about The Last Elephant. http://hollyrobertsonepaintingatatime.blogspot.com/2012/03/last-elephant-2009.html Frightened Elephant is The Last Elephant's cousin, or brother, or sister. With their incredible intelligence and awareness, I can't help but think this elephant knows what's coming, and that he's very anxious and worried about the fact that he may be one of the last of his kind. 

Snake Daughter 2012

After Adam and Eve ate fruit from the Tree of Life, as bidden by the serpent, what happened next?  Lots of not so great things:  women were doomed to suffer in childbirth and men were forced to toil for their living. Innocence no longer existed in the world and the two sexes stopped coexisting peacefully because of all of the shaming and blaming that went on.  And of course, God booted both out of the Garden of Eden to live miserable, conflicted lives for the rest of eternity. 

So--who had to carry the guilt for of all of this?  The serpent's daughter, that's who. So much blame handed down from her parents, what a thing to have to bear! She carries the Tree of Life, upside down now, within her, holding her mother and father in each hand as she walks, giving them a good shake every now and then, letting them know of her disappointment and frustration.

Three Birds Resting 2012

My mother loves birds. At 83, she lives alone with her Aussie mix, Abbey, in a small house 18 miles south of Santa Fe. Her backyard is filled with bird feeders and watering stations. She sits at her dining room table for long stretches of time and through her large plate glass windows watches the hundreds of birds as they arrive to eat and drink, bathe and socialize. At times, even though she has hung shiny, swirly things to detract them, one will fly into one of those windows and die. I've asked her to save those birds for me so I can photograph them. In the past, she has always placed them in small plastic bags and put them in her freezer for me to collect on my trips to Santa Fe.

Over the last several years, her memory and judgment have started to decline. The last bird she saved for me she forgot to put in the freezer, and kept in the garage instead. Fortunately, it was winter, so although the garage didn't freeze, it stayed cool. None the less, by the time I picked it up it was starting to decay. All three of the birds that are "resting" in this image are from my mother, including the one she forgot to freeze. As her memory continues to decline, I imagine these will be the last birds she will have been able to save for me.

Being Scolded 2012

To Scold:To reprimand or criticize harshly and usually angrily.  freedictionary.com

These are the people I scold (in the order of most to least): my husband, my children, and, every once in a great while, my students. I'm always amazed at the power of a scold, and at how harmful scolding can be when it's done on a continual basis. When my children were young and overwhelming in their energy and illogical approach to things, I found myself scolding them often, and then always regretting it afterwards. I almost never scold them now, and when I do, it's more of a gentle reprimand. After all, as young adults, they have the ability to simply remove themselves from my life if they so desire. My husband I try not to scold. It makes for big trouble between us, but sometimes a scold just pops out.

Rarely do I scold my students, but I did while teaching at a recent workshop. With the group gathered in front of me for a demonstration, I found myself suddenly very annoyed at finding a dirty brush left in an open container of medium that should have been covered. The words jumped out of my mouth, "Who did this? This is a shared area and people can't leave things open, contaminated, and dirty!" Immediately, I could see the alarm in their faces, and then their nervousness. It made me separate and apart.  And, once again, I regretted my harsh words.

Couple Dancing 2012

It was a hot day. The neighbors were having their roof re-done: stripped, rebuilt, and then tarred. Working on that roof in June in New Mexico had to be hot, hard work. Ranchera music blasted out over the neighborhood. It seemed like the same song, or at least a variation of it, over and over and over. Annoyed by the incessant music, hot, and already tired, I started to work in my studio, picking up pieces of paper with images on them and moving them listlessly around, dropping them onto the different paintings I'd prepared earlier. And suddenly there they were: two figures dancing to the Ranchera Music-- stiff, quite polite, the man a little scary, but really a nice guy once you got to know him. I tried turning her face away, but then the painting became about fear, and that wasn't right. This was about two people in a strange land, connecting through what they knew and loved: the sounds of accordions, bugles, guitars, and violins, accompanying a soulful singer, a man dressed in tight pants, a white, fluffy shirt, a short jacket and a huge hat, singing about lost love and betrayal, loneliness and pain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6HcQ-bxaaM