Blind 2013

From earliest times white horses have been mythologized as possessing exceptional properties...There are also white horses which are divinatory, who prophesy or warn of danger.  In more than one tradition, the white horse carries patron saints or the world saviour in the end times.  Wikipedia  

About a week ago I had a dream in which I was riding a huge horse who suddenly could not continue.  I got off to examine the horse and discovered that his legs were bound.  I untied his legs, then woke.  I did this piece before I had the dream, and haven't known quite what to think of it, especially now with the bound dream horse always at the back of my consciousness.  A friend who saw the image suggested that it had to do with relationships between men and women. I like that interpretation, but I think there are others.  I find it interesting that the horse's eyes are shuttered, and that his back  is covered with both an open eye and the written word blind.  The young man seems to be listening, but I have to doubt that he is hearing what the white horse is trying to tell him.

Blinders:  

1.  A pair of leather flaps attached to a horse's bridle to curtail side vision 

2.  Something that serves to obscure clear perception and discernment

Woman Trying to Listen to Her Better Self 2013

I don't entirely understand why, but so much of being creative involves huge doses of self-doubt, and sometimes, self-dislike.  In January I started a new body of work which involved the following:   taking lots of photos, painting panels, looking at my photos, printing out my photos, cutting those photos, adhering them to the panels, looking at them, getting excited, having doubts, taking them down, repainting the panels, and then starting the whole process over.  Here is a tiny sampling of my busy mind as I worked or lay in bed at night, unable to fall asleep:  You thought it looked so great but it doesn't now, does it?  or Why would anyone  ever want to hang this on their wall? or  And where precisely are you going to put all these new paintings when they come back from not having sold?  and the worst one What a terrible thing to leave your daughters when you die.  All These paintings that they won't know what to do with.

But fortunately I have a better, stronger, and smarter self.  I like her a lot. She calms me, reassures me, and lets me know that it's okay, that what I am doing is pretty terrific, and that in fact people will be thrilled to hang one of these pieces on their wall.  She reminds me that I can always buy another Tuff Shed to store work and that once I'm dead and gone my intelligent daughters will figure out what to do with all those paintings.  For better or for worse it will be their problem, not mine.  Best of all, she lets me know that what I do is important, and that it matters. Even if I don't know exactly why, she does know, and that's enough.

Woman with Sunburn 1983

I just got back from Carmel(by the Sea)in California.  With a packed schedule of talks, workshops, and openings, I only had three chances to get to the beach.  Like most of us, I love the beach, especially now, smack dab in the middle of the worst drought in New Mexico's recorded history. The first time I went it was early in the morning, and I jogged the length of the beach, and then back.  It's a dog friendly beach, and lots of people were out with their dogs.  It made me feel good watching them run and retrieve and shake and roll and pant and trot through the sand with their friends, both human and canine. No leashes. The next time I came to the beach it was a little more crowded.  It was a warm Sunday in Northern California, and people had streamed over the mountains to spend the day there. The water was very cold, so most of the people were on the beach, laying in the sun or walking along the water in bikinis and board shorts.  Kids, mostly, would run in and out of the surf, screaming when the cold water hit their legs and feet.  The third time I came back was later that same day, with a friend.  We stood on the bluff overlooking the beach and watched as the sun went down.  It was chilly, and I had to borrow two of his jackets, feeling like a little girl in the large fleece pullovers.  There were fires all up and down the beach, little dots of yellow on the huge expanse of white sand, people sitting quietly as the tide headed back out.

Thinking About Having Sex 1984

A few years ago, our neighbor Bob and my husband Bob were talking about how much they thought about having sex.  "When I was young, I'd say about every 30 seconds"  friend Bob said.  Husband Bob felt much the same way, "When I was younger, I'd have to say most of my waking thoughts were about sex, even when I didn't quite know what it was."  They both agreed that  they don't think about sex as much now as negotiating the slippery slope of aging takes up so much of their time and energy. Still, sex is on their minds much of the time. As a boy, Husband Bob learned to draw(he has a beautiful hand) by going through his mother's homemaking magazines looking for brassiere adds. He would erase out the the bras and  then carefully, with a pencil, reconstruct the breast, nipple and all.  The last thing he would do, so that his mother wouldn't find out what he was up to, would be to carefully reverse the process, drawing the bra back in so that it looked the way he originally found it.

Dog Dreaming 1997

Dusty came into our lives 13 years ago.  She was about six months old, and one of two remaining pups from a neighbor's litter.  Her mother was a black lab, and her father, a German Shepard. She was timid and hid behind her larger, more robust brother.  But, we wanted a female, and so we chose her.  She had never been on a leash, never been out of the backyard that had been her home for six months and was skin and bones, the brother clearly getting all of the food.  We put a collar and leash on her and started out down the road. She jumped and bucked and resisted us, choking on the leash and throwing herself on the ground, but by the time we had gone the 1/4 mile to our house she understood what being on a leash meant.  We brought her into the the backyard with our other dog and she was so frightened  that she defecated.  When we fed her she inhaled the food, and this would always be a problem with her, gulping her food down so quickly that she would vomit soon after unless we spread the dry kibble out on a flat cookie pan.

For thirteen and one half years she lived with us.  She adored all nine year old girls because that was the age my daughter was when we got her.  She was a good dog, with some quirks, like biting the neighbor through the fence as he irrigated his pasture.  She had great dignity and patience, and raised our next dog, a Dalmatian puppy, with care and love. She was a beautiful dog, and whenever I would see wolves on TV they would remind me of Dusty.  She watched over us.

Over the last several years she developed arthritis in her hips and cataracts in  her eyes.  She began to have more and more difficulty walking and started losing her balance, falling easily when she would  come around a corner or when one of the other dogs would brush against her.  Poops would drop out of her without her knowedge.  I knew her time was running out when she defecated as she ate one morning, losing her balance, and then landing in her feces, unable to pull herself back up. We called a Vet, a woman, and arranged with her to come to the house.  On that last day, we gathered around Dusty while the Vet gave her several injections:  a tranquilizer to relax her, then another injection to end her life, except that her heart wouldn't stop beating so she had to give her another, this time directly into her heart.  It still beat, Dusty wouldn't give up, but finally, she died."Crossed the Rainbow Bridge" as the Vet said.

I found this image today, done several years before Dusty was born  Like many of my images it is prophetic--looking like Dusty with her Lupine head, her black torso and her long, thin legs.  Inside the body of the dog is a photograph of a young girl with her eyes closed.  I like to think this was what  Dusty dreamed about  as she left us--that nine year old girl who brought her into our lives so many years ago.

Bucking Bronco 2005

Kids in other parts of the country went to ball games with their dads, or concerts in the park, or maybe the circus, but in Santa Fe, New Mexico, we went to the Rodeo.  I admit, the cotton candy was a big draw for me, but, sticky sweet stuff or not,  I loved the entire thing:  broncs and bulls slamming out of their chutes while their riders leaned back, raking the animals shoulders with spurred heels, hoping to last for 8 seconds;  trick riders and barrel racers galloping around the arena on beautiful horses, always at full bore, and at times,the bodies of the horses came so close to the ground that they seemed to defy gravity.  I never thought to worry about the necks of the running calves as ropes swirled out, landing loosely just behind their ears, then tightening so that they flipped to the ground while the horse slid to a stop,  the rider jumping off with a small rope held between his teeth to secure the animal's ankles. Once released, the calf would get up and wobble away as the cowboy coiled his rope and mounted his horse.

Lurking underneath the excitement and fun was the ever present threat of danger, the very real possibility of serious injury or even, every few years, death.  It gave the evening an extra boost, like the ominous storm clouds that would come up over the mountains to the east as we sat in the dark under the bright lights,  lightening flickering, thunder mumbling . When it would become clear that one of our  warriors was wounded,  the crowd would become completely silent as the medics knelt over the twisted cowboy or the gored clown.  An ambulance would drive in through the soft dirt and the still body would be loaded in.  Once through the big double gates at the south end of the arena, the ambulance would start it's siren, ear splitting at first, but growing fainter and fainter as the ambulance raced away.

Working Spring/Summer 2103

Since January of this year I have been working in my studio, painting panels and then adding  photographic elements to those panels.  The entire process is slow and tortuous, until it isn't, and then things  happen with such speed and clarity that I wonder if I'm in the same time continuum as the person who had been plodding so miserably along.   

Scraps of paper are everywhere, the left overs of  photographs I've been futilely cutting. I'll see one out of the corner of my eye, and the next thing I know, it will have given me the information I need to start a new image.  Shapes that were nothing suddenly make sense, and then, there I am, off to the races.

My studio has gotten progressively more cluttered and chaotic, not just from day to day, but from year to year.  Earlier pictures of my studio show a clean, open space.  Now every surface is full of heaps of paper, scissors and paper cutters, boxes with bits and pieces of photos, and stacks of painted panels.  The floor is littered with scraps of uncut paper--if I drop something I'm cutting, forget it, I'll never find it again.  I keep adding  more and more tables to the room, but I'll never have enough.  The shelves around the perimeter walls are stacked three deep with unfinished pieces, all waiting to be completed. 

Studio 

Piles of hands and arms, waiting to be fit into something.

The worst thing is that I have been doing just the "fun" part--if you want to call it that--of marrying of the images with the painted grounds.  I haven't wanted to bother with doing the unfun part, which is gluing the images to the surface and then putting on a final finish varnish.  It's tedious work which calls for a perfectionist's attention to detail, and which, if it goes wrong can be disastrous.  Like not paying attention and gluing something upside down.  It's the kind of work a really good assistant should be doing, but, unfortunately, that assistant is me.  By the end of my time gluing all these images(and there are alot)I will have a sore jaw and such a stiff neck that I will be forced to move my whole body to turn my head.  A sensible person would make a few, glue a few, then make a few more, and glue a few more, etc. etc.  But when you're your own boss, you get to work in any wacky, disfunctional way you want.