| I work in a highly communicative,
but silent medium. I paint. I spend hours each day alone and silent in front
of my board applying color, creating form, traveling unspeakable distances
while standing in the same spot. Recently, I sat down with Richard Lou,
the curator for Hecho En Califas, to answer questions. What I experienced
with him was a first for me. His presence and his provocation provided me
with an opportunity to speak. During the interview, I felt like I was sitting
in a perfect circle of sunlight. It softened me and gave rise to a voice
I have never heard.The questions I remember most are the ones that went
unanswered. "Your exteriors are painted the same as your interiors. What
does that signify? Are you trying to keep something in? Or something out?"
I didn't get a chance to follow up on those, but I heard him asking me those
questions over and over in the days after the interview. This feels like
an entry point to talk about my work here. Because it lays a foundation
for anything else I can say. What he was picking up on has to do with the
origin of my work. While I am not trying to keep anything in or out, I am
working from a very deep personal/spiritual landscape. My images most often
begin as haunts within my mind. When an image haunts me long enough, I commit
it to paint. These haunts are generally related to something going on in
my inner life. The image may be a summation, a resolution of a particular
issue. Or it can present more of a lesson, open, waiting to be experienced.
Sometimes these haunts are from other times, even other dimensions. Often
the whole point is simply the act of painting one of these haunts. The time
spent fully creating the image imparts what I need to learn. |
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Painting is my healer,
my teacher, my guide. The painting itself stands simply as a milepost,
a marker on the side of the road. I've found that away from me, my paintings
still hold the power of their lesson.
At a show in Sacramento, a young woman came up to me, quite shy. She asked
to speak with me privately. She said that standing amidst my paintings,
she felt beautiful, strong, transcendent, a way that she had never felt
before. She began to cry. I was very moved, all the time knowing that
this had nothing to do with me, but to do with my paintings exposed and
doing their job. Sometimes I think that I am simply the one who gets to
stand in front of the easel while this work finds its way up and out.
One of the bravest questions Richard Lou asked me was, "You say that your
paintings are often marks, mileposts for rites of passage. I see that
your body is marked too. What marks become paintings and what marks go
to your body?" Immediately I thought about my paintings out there in the
world. They live with other people, have lives separate from mine. They
are like my children. I give birth to them, then let them go to fulfill
what destiny they may have. Some are teaching and holding space for people
I have never even met. They are independent of me. But sometimes marks
come up for me that are mine. They are for me to hold onto so that the
lesson or the healing can stay close at hand. Keep me on track. All of
my body marks have stories like my paintings do. Mark a time, a passage,
a lesson that I must remember everyday. I am a traveling artist, and my
body documents my journey as much as my paintings do.
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