Dallas Commission

This untitled painting was recently completed for a commission in Dallas.  The clients asked for a certain blue-green from another of my works, but it took four tries to get both the color and the requested size.  This is one of the alternates – it is a little off from the 36 x 36″ square they requested.  I love it.  In fact, all four of the paintings turned out beautifully.

Soft Fascinations

Reading an article on ecopsychology in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, I was struck by the phrase “soft fascinations” used by attention-restoration theorists to describe qualities in nature that may replenish cognitive function.  They were referring to bubbling brooks and rustling leaves, but could have ben describing my paintings.  I am wondering if certain kinds of art, and not just my paintings, might not be referred to as “soft fascinations” and be equally  effective at replenishing brain function.  This could be studied and quantified.   Maybe it has been.  I do know that hospitals and health care facilities are more and more hanging art on their walls, with probably varying results due to the specific artworks involved.

Certainly making my art has been therapeutic for me, in many ways, and probably like most people, I have memories of cathartic or healing experiences of other art.  For instance, walking into a video installation by Steina at SITE Santa Fe in a confused physical/emotional state, spending twenty minutes there and walking out clear-headed and exhilarated.  Steina’s video work consisted of multiple tracks of rushing water, amazingly manipulated and distorted   Perhaps the natural imagery was essential to its organizing effect on my organism!  Sitting in the installation was like standing on a rocky coast, but visually  intensified.  Agnes Martin once compared the contemplation of her paintings to  sitting and watching waves lap on a beach.

I don’t mean to narrow the value of any artwork to its therapeutic effect – good art is obviously much more than that.   It moves us on many levels, dialogues with the history of art, and inspires critical reflections of all sorts.  Art is chosen, shaped and edited by the artist; it doesn’t grow on its own, like a forest.  But as it may be imbued with the nature of the artist and perhaps the nature of the materials it is made of, it may have a felt power of its own, similar to the power of wilderness to stir and awaken us.

The C Gallery Exhibit

Connie Rohde is showing my acrylic-on-Dura-lar paintings in a two-person exhibit at The C Gallery in Los Alamos, CA.  Connie is a long-time friend and patron of the arts.  Our connection goes back to 1986, when she was director of Arts Outreach in the Santa Ynez Valley, and sponsored me for  two California Artist In Residence Grants to work in the schools there.  Gallerista is her third professional incarnation (since I’ve known her, anyway!), her second being an award-winning high school teacher.  If you go to see this show, Connie will surely engage you in a conversation about the paintings, about art, about life.  Her gallery is a delightful outpost of fine art in rural wine country California.

Titled Metal Powder and Dura-lar, the two-person show also features Lawrence Abrahamsen’s paintings.  The C Gallery is on Bell Street on Los Alamos, tel. 805-344-3807.

Smink Exhibit in Dallas

Size Matters

When Smink in Dallas asked for some smaller paintings in the Nymphs series, I knew I was in for a challenge.  One can’t simply take a process that works well at a certain size and miniaturize it. For one thing, in my paintings the paint will always flow and pool at the same scale.  It just behaves that way on the Yupo, and I can’t do much about it.  For another thing, what has visual impact at one size may not at another.  And, the relationship between the scale of the paint flow pattern and the circles grid  is critical.  A couple of years ago I tried painting very small circles – half an inch diameter – in a grid but this somehow inhibited the flow of paint.  Also, although we have all gotten very used to seeing small reproductions of paintings and imagining them to be larger, physical size really does matter in the way our bodies, our eyes and musculature, relate to what we see.

I decided to use a range of circle sizes and to cut pieces out of large painted sheets, then combine them in almost a collage process.  I have to say, although I love the four that eventually got finished, they did not come together as easily as the full-size Nymph paintings.  Lots of struggle and decisions.  But perhaps some new directions have emerged here.

Dallas Show at Smink

Egeria - watercolor on Yupo - 40 x 50"

On October 17th an exhibit of my work will open at Smink in Dallas.  Smink, an established importer of contemporary Italian furniture and design, has recently moved into a terrific space on Dragon Street, the art and  design district, and will inaugurate their gallery space with this show!  If you happen to be in Dallas, the reception will be from 5 to 8 p.m.

ZaneBennett Gallery Exhibit Opens July 24th

Hyale (Raindrop), my newest painting, will probably be hanging in the ZaneBennett Contemporary Art group show that opens on Friday here in Santa Fe.  I certainly hope so.  Six of the new watercolor paintings and six very small paintings were delivered to the gallery this week.  I can’t wait to see which ones they choose to hang (there isn’t room for all of them).  Also showing will be works by old friends: Madelin Coit, Helmut Lohr, Zachariah Reike, Joe Novak, and Jennifer Joseph.  We all showed at EVO Gallery when it was still on Canyon Road, and still primarily supporting Santa Fe Artists.  These are all artists of high caliber, and I’m proud and happy to be exhibiting work with them once more.

Of course, we have all evolved somewhat in the intervening years – the years that correspond to my illness – so the whole show will definitely be fresh and full of surprises.  I’m stoked!

Also opening in the gallery that evening will be another group show, of local video artists’ work, and downstairs, a show by an artist, well-known in Europe, who I’ve never heard of and can’t remember his name.  If the work is strong, I will remember his name forever.

July 3, 2009

 

River Spirit, painted last spring, is from a series of horizontal paintings.  I was noticing how the flow of paint – the thin and thick of it –  could suggest moving water.  One of my concerns was to contain that visual movement within the boundaries of the painting, so that the image completes itself.  It is a still point.  

  River Spirit   watercolor on Yupo        23 x 54″

Nymphs

Aganippe #1, watercolor on Yupo, image size: 35x36 in.

Welcome to my blog.  I’ll be writing about my paintings, my art practice, and posting images of work as it gets made.  

The series named for Greek nymphs (and one for a local river, Tesuque) mark my emergence from about four years of illness, when I could paint only sporadically, and my personal focus was on healing, if I could focus on anything at all.  In another post, I plan to write about the gifts I gleaned from that illness, but now it’s time to talk about painting.  These are watercolor on Yupo “paper,” a translucent sheet recently developed specifically for watercolor.  Brushed on Yupo, the paint does not absorb into the surface, as it would with regular paper, but remains on top to dry, and as it dries, it moves over the slick plastic to pool in any low areas, just as river water will pool in deep places.  This pooling is beyond my control, altho I have begun to learn how to guide it a little.  

I have come to these paintings through experimentation and noticing, and following the thread of my interest.  Obviously, I’m interested in natural processes, especially how they interact with obstacles, in this case, the painted-on circles.  Paint pigment carried in water demonstrates its own process very visually, and has so many counterparts in the natural world: rain puddles, food stains, kitchen spills, bathtub rings, pools left as a stream dries up in dry weather.  

My process seems to me to embody the essence of allowing.  A grid of circles is painted on the paper, and the paint is allowed to flow.  What a yin way to create!  Water with earth (pigment), the yin elements in Chinese tradition, suggests nurturance, support, flow, change and healing.  Water supports life by allowing it to flourish.  So these paintings are indicative of my personal healing, and offered to the world as spaces for healing, inspiration, and spiritual support.  They are as beautiful as I can make them.  They present a balance between structure – the grid of circles – and fluidity.

Like the Chinese, the ancient Greeks associated water with women.  Each one of their streams, springs and wells, even their wet marshy places, had its own female deity, a Naiad, a fresh-water nymph.  The Nymphs were personified as lovely young women, some with powerful healing or oracular abilities.  Aganippe presided over a well that was sacred to the Muses.  She could inspire people who drank her water.  Eupheme was also associated with the Muses as their nurse. 

Eupheme #1, watercolor on Yupo, image size: 35x37 in.