Sensual Memory

This painting -- a collage, actually -- began with a wish to express something about corn and the Southwest. My childhood in the Midwest -- The Corn Belt -- acquainted me with green corn plants in the field. Cornfields were a familiar and everyday part of everyone's life there. I learned to know corn in sensual ways beyond just eating it. The smell of a freshly shucked ear, revulsion at borers spoiling beautiful ears, snapping and popping sounds of corn growing at night, seeing the stars  in a dark sky through the leaves and tassels, jumping away at the sudden pain of a cut when you brushed against a leaf the wrong direction -- all of these are ways of knowing corn that could only be learned in a corn field.

So later, studying anthropology, when I learned of corn's importance in early agriculture, I wasn't surprised at all. It seemed a matter of course.

Quilts were another everyday feature of life when I was young. One grandmother pieced quilt tops, the other made embroidered and appliqued quilts. Later, my mother began to piece tops. She and I spent many hours searching for antique pieced tops that she later made into quilts for the family. Quilts combined necessity with strong design and beauty.

In the mid-1990's, I began to create a series of collages based on antique quilt patterns. Maggie Malone's "1001 Patchwork Designs" has been inspirational for me ever since. I like to look for patterns that might work well together, as well as communicate something to my viewers.

"Corn, Beans and Squash"

I began by combining two patterns -- "Corn & Beans" and "Squash Blossom," using colors of sky and cornfield. Then using a simple Native American corn plant design, I began to paint corn stalks in a semi-opaque green on top of the quilt design. The result wasn't good -- somehow it didn't make a strong design statement and the corn plants sure weren't a good focal point. It needed something more -- much more.

Frantically digging through my stacks and piles of hand-colored collage papers, a bright red-orange with splatters of gold caught my eye. Just for grins, I cut out a stalk, leaves and tassel and tried it against the collage. Zowee! Just like popcorn! The magic happened, I finished the piece, framed it and entered it in the 2009 Black Range Fall Membership Show, where it was awarded first place.

The inspiration here seems to be a combination of things -- my own early experience, interest in anthropology and a basic need to accomplish strong design in my work.

A Wish for Enlightenment

The painting to be examined today began with an underpainting that was created "just for fun." Was my subconscious at work the whole time? I'll never know.

“Golden Heart of Bodhichitta”

In 2008 I attended a workshop in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, taught by Mary Ann Beckwith, a real visionary with new and interesting ideas, and a really great teacher. Among other techniques offered at this workshop, her polyester webbing technique interested me greatly.

When I returned home after the workshop, I continued to play with the technique, developing my own ways of using it. One idea that really appealed to me was that of pulling a latent image out of the background. In the raw beginning of what would eventually become this painting, I saw blood vessels against a glowing golden shape. The idea of a human heart occurred to me, and I worked to pull out the heart shape, complete with major vessels, by negatively painting around the heart with the darker teal and plum colors.

The heart began to emerge as a beating, living symbol of life and love and I thought of bodhichitta, a loving compassion dedicated to all life.

Inspiration: textures and colors that revealed themselves to me as a subject.


So in this instance, the underlying painting was already there, waiting to be revealed through interpretation by my own subconscious, perhaps. It makes me wonder if the same kind of quiet mind and just "being with" the painting would more often reveal a great subject...

Inspiration or Perspiration?

Thomas Edison said “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”  This blog is about the one percent, the inspiration.

I have always been intensely interested in how and where artists get their ideas. And judging by the questions I am asked by students and people looking at my art, so are many others.

So, in an effort to discover how inspiration works, I decided to examine the process in a group of works for which I already know what the original inspiration was. Then maybe we could create an outline by seeing what is common among the group, and at the end, connect the dots!

“Current Residents of Dripping Springs”

Just east of Las Cruces, New Mexico, at Dripping Springs Canyon on the west side of the Organ Mountains, are the ruins of a late 1800’s resort built by an ex-officer of the Confederate Army, A. E. Van Patten. Not much remains but a partial building. Finding the setting and the idea of a resort up in the clean mountain air very engaging, I visited it a half dozen times between 1980 and 2000. During one visit, I was particularly intrigued by the idea that the only occupants in recent years have been wildlife and perhaps a few human spirits.

Taking this idea further, I created a crumbling wall, dark doorway and surrounding cactus that have encroached. My very favorite high desert dwellers are ravens, so they HAD to be there, along with the spirit of a fellow in a western hat, slouching just inside the doorway.

To make a lot of strong texture, I soaked 140-lb. watercolor paper, then wadded it tightly to create wrinkles and lines on the surface. Then I established the top outline of a crumbling adobe wall and filled in, painting negatively around tall and short cacti and the doorway, leaving plenty of white for sparkle here and there. The background canyon wall was painted with a large brush in blue and slate colors, the doorway filled in very dark. The last steps were painting in a variety of greens and golds for prickly vegetation, creating the ravens in a dark blue-black, and lifting out the spirit figure with a thirsty brush. Final touches included scraping and scratching out a few more whites around the cactus and making the spirit outline more indistinct.

Inspiration – a fascinating place and musings about who and what might remain after many years of human absence.

So the first thing to do is go out and find those places and sights that result in an emotional response!