It's FALL, y'all!

I’m celebrating our first day of not-90-degree-weather in forever by finishing up some paintings and preparing for the annual White Rock Studio Tour. I’d forgotten what 60 degrees felt like!

Fall cleaning is a thing, right?

At the studio, we got a new roof… which meant a lot of deep cleaning before and after, and not much time to accomplish everything with the tour coming up this weekend. If you are in the Dallas area, come out after the TX/OU game on Saturday and see my space. It might never be this clean again! I even mopped.

Autumn also means building up inventory for winter shows, so I have been working hard both at home and at the studio to finish my many in-progress projects. I finished the messy task of plastering and sanding panels, and I am ready to paint! My favorite subjects for fall are Aspen trees, but I am still on my cactus kick from Big Bend and New Mexico.

See the photos below for studio map and info on the tour! We are stop #35, and there are many of us (although our beloved Lynn Rushton is the artist named on the flyer), so you get to see LOTS of artists at one, convenient location. PSA, we are located close to White Rock Coffee and it will be perfect pumpkin scone weather this weekend… so come down! We’d love to meet you.

Tales from the Desert

After traveling through the depressing landscape of oil fields, tumble weeds and tumbling trash piles blown about by the unrelenting wind on the Texas plains, the Davis Mountains rise up almost shockingly- the land changes so quickly near Pecos, Texas.

These Texas Mountains keep their secrets. From afar, they appear rosy and mostly barren- but plant life and wildlife abound when you are in the high passes and the valleys. And spring, spring, glorious spring, brings out beautiful colors in the desert. Ocatillo blossoms are coral red and improbably tall. Prickly pears stud the in-between-spaces with purple, green, and warm yellow flowers. The desert has so many faces, so many colors. Fragrant, four foot tall bluebonnets run rampant, if you know where to look for them.

We spent about a week in West Texas, primarily in Big Bend, Terlingua and Boquillas. It was not nearly enough time. We met hospitable people in various towns, enjoyed a meal in Mexico after crossing the Rio Grande on a rowboat, and hiked the Chisos and Davis Mountains.

Apart from the natural beauty of the land, I so enjoyed the time I spent with the people I met along the border. A series is taking shape in my mind (and on my easel), juxtaposing the arresting landscape, the kindness we encountered, and the views of people at the border, with the political rhetoric we are fed through the news and social media.

“The Wall” is an inescapable spectre. It is part of our national zeitgeist, and its implications become more tangible the closer you get to the border. Locals share their views in road signs and embroidered trinkets, while those far away spin away at their fear-fueled agenda. The backdrop to all this is the land herself. Eternal, sharp edged, and oblivious to these man-made cares. The land, and the creatures abiding there, and the cross-border dialogue of the locals tell a much different story than the myths we read online.

What is a chimera? It is a fearsome beast; but it is also an illusion. So much of what we read is built on carefully crafted propaganda: intended to elicit an emotional response. And then, there is the concrete: Earth, and animals, and people who cultivate their lives on this land.

Ocatillos, oil and mixed media, 2019

A “forest” of whimsical ocatillos blooms on the border between Texas and Mexico. These improbable plants grow to be more than twelve feet tall.

All things new

I suppose it is human nature to long for spring in midwinter. Grey days abound, in Dallas. I began working on a series of work in oil on Venetian plaster last year, and I find myself obsessing over color. These works are still largely experimental, but I love working with plaster and oil. There is something calming in the rhythm and method of plastering thin coats on panel, scraping and re-scraping, then burnishing the layers to see what sorts of patterns emerge. And then, there is something about Texas herself: the sky, the land, the hospitable people and damn, inhospitable heat. So here I am, playing with contradictions. Blossoms in winter, oil and plaster, the sweet, natural gifts of the Texas landscape for those who are willing to sweat their way through Texas summer.

Magnolias are among my favorite trees. They are a symbol of summer in the South. I began painting magnolias last spring, taking walks with my daughter after the heat of the day had (somewhat) passed, and photographing the blossoms before they turned brown and curled in on themselves. Magnolia petals contain beautiful shadows, and make for great color studies. My newest is on crimson and turquoise plaster, a palette that reminds me of everything I love about the southwest.

Magnolia in Crimson and Turquoise, 2019