People often ask me  about the translucent “paper” I use.  It’s called Yupo and unlike Mylar, has the ability to hold water-based media on its surface.  Lucky for me, Yupo became available in this country in 1996, so when I was looking for a transparent surface for watercolor, a friend was able to recommend it.  Interesting that I had to find  a new “space-age” product to use with the age-old medium of watercolor.  Yupo has a shimmery, silky quality that doesn’t come across in reproduction.   In the above painting, Psekas, I have overlaid four sheets of Yupo, each painted with a slightly different hue of gold circles.  If you look closely, you can see where the sheets overlap, or don’t.

Yupo is archival, which means it is not supposed to change over time, it doesn’t out-gas any toxic fumes, and according to the manufacturer, it is “tree-free” and 100% recyclable.  Not that I want anyone to recycle my paintings!

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art in Santa Fe has two of my Portals in their holiday show.   It’s an exciting exhibit of mostly small, affordable work by lots of the gallery’s New Mexico and Southwest artists, so come by and see it.

The Portals, though small (19 x 16″) are a significant aspect of my studio practice.  Because of their size, the flow of paint is highlighted.  There is really nothing else to see in these works but paint, rectangle and space, with two or more layers of painted surfaces suggesting a milky depth.   To me, these are little spiritual exercises.  Alan Watts wrote (and I paraphrase from memory) that the human being is an aperture through which Source sees itself.  The Portals present that aperture in abstract form.

In a little explosion of creativity, over the past few weeks I’ve learned to combine the circle grids and the bar/stripe grids in the paintings. something I thought I’d never do.  This takes the work a little farther from the monochrome minimalist look and into richer, more complex territory.  What factors led to these changes are mostly mysterious to me, but I did find myself listening to Schubert instead of  Reich in the studio.   Some “old-fashioned” sense of composing calls to me now that wants more than repetition – maybe even a start, middle and finish to the visual experience.

Gold Light River, at 42 x 41,” is one of the smaller paintings in this series so far.  I’m particularly excited about some tall vertical paintings that will soon be making their appearance on the blog.  These paintings challenge my notions and rules of what is allowed into my art.  It’s a good stretch that strengthens my thinking and intuition and lets even more light into the work.

This new painting represents a departure from the circle-grid Nymph paintings I’ve been doing.  Chancing to see of one of Donald Judd’s stacked wall sculptures got me thinking about the appeal of regularity in so-called minimal art of the last century.  I decided to employ a precisely measured arrangement of stripes using the watercolor on polypropylene.  The way the paint pooled within the stripes surprised me.   So, here is a painting in which the stripes are regular (3″ stripes of paint and 3″ spaces between) but the placement and overlapping are intuitive.  There’s a dance between the chaotic flow of paint, the striped grids and the translucent overlaps.

Zane Bennett Contemporary  is showing my painting, Thanis #14 (plus some smaller works) in an exhibit of New Mexico Women Artists.  The other artists include Karina Hean, Colette Hosmer, Mary Shaffer, Holly Roberts, Maria Hwang-Levy, Rachel Stevens and Karen Yank.  We are based throughout New Mexico and work in a variety  of media.  Many of these women have had a significant impact on the arts in NM, and have works in public collections throughout the state.  The reception is this evening, from 5 to 7:00.  Zane Bennett is located on Guadalupe Street in the Railyard.  You are invited!

The Thanis series uses a mixture of four different pigments that look green when the paint is mixed in a jar, but see how they separate out!   The results are endlessly varied and unpredictable and suggestive of many natural environments.   Several paintings, both large and small, from this series will be in the April show at Smink in Dallas.   If you are a Dallas friend of mine, please come to the reception and say hi.  Wayne and I will be driving down with a van loaded with new work.

This painting, Luna #3, is currently hanging in the juried show 18 Days at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe.  The show, co-sponsored by the New Mexico chapter of the National Museum for Women in the Arts is part of a month-long celebration of  visual art, poetry, dance and film.  You can see the show on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through March 20th (18 days of viewing).

On February 4th, overnight temperatures went down to -22 degrees, according to my neighbor down the road.  We never thought it could get that cold in Lamy!  And neither did the construction worker who had put insulation for a water pipe in the studio on the inside of the wall, leaving the pipe exposed to the cold outside.  The pipe froze; I found the flood, with water pouring out of the wall, within an hour of its bursting, and was able to rescue most of the portfolios of artwork that were sitting on the floor.  One historic watercolor by my dad, dating from World War II, was lost, as well as a print by my California friend, Dorothy Churchill-Johnson.  My paintings stayed safely stored in racks a few inches off the floor.  Luckily, my son, Turner, was able to come right over, along with our friend  James Koskinas, and together we shoveled water out the door for two hours until the water main could be turned off.

The weeks since then have been filled with visits from the plumber – there were serious consequences to turning off the water to the property! – and the remediation people and now the contractor and his guys.  There have been endless calls to the insurance adjuster.  Northern New Mexico has been declared a catastrophe area so the insurance process is a bit different.  My framed paintings were carted off to a temperature-controlled storage facility in town. The recent watercolors, plus old portfolios full of work by my dad, myself and friends are stacked in the back bedroom.  It will probably take another two weeks before life returns to normal and I can resume painting.

Although we were without water in the house for two days until the plumber could restore service, things could have been much worse.  Thousands of people in northern NM were without heat for over a week – the natural gas pipeline went awry.  We were snug with our radiant heat and big wood stove.  And, though it is hard not to be painting, I am taking care of many little maintenance projects in the house, and making plans for an April show at Smink in Dallas.

Zane Bennett Contemporary Art in Santa Fe has mounted a holiday show of small-ish works that is really worth seeing. I hope you can stop in to see it. My paintings are upstairs in a beautifully-lit passageway.