Artist's Talk 9.28.2019

Landscape — Abstraction — Motherhood

I grew up in a house filled with art; art made by my mother, by my grandmothers, and great grandfathers. It was filled, too, with the collegiate pots made by other potters from around the United States and the world, some purchased on travels, some gifts, some traded — these gathered in cupboards, shelves, and mantles. Wine cups, mugs, plates, bowls, platters and pitchers. Art was not cordoned off in museums for me. It was something for daily use. And whether it was paintings or pots, I knew them all as touched objects. Often I knew the hands that had made these things, things that I took into my own hands. Each object was a little signpost of connection, with the maker, with the material, with the history that is represented in each object. There is a communication there with art that started very early for me. 

Growing up we were allowed to have only blank paper, nothing with lines on it, no coloring books. We were provided a lot of materials and space, but only occasional words of instruction. We experienced a lot of freedom to see what the material’s capacities were in themselves. We were mainly left to it. My mother’s mother, my Grandma Quie often wouldn’t really paint with us per se. Yet each time Grandma came out to visit our family, or we travelled to Minnesota, she would draw another line of connection for us. 

She would take us on walks, with a large paper bag in hand. She would dig up mounds of moss, have us collect interesting looking sticks, leaves, berries, nut shells, stones, and put it all in the bag. She urged us to look for grapevine curls. We spent time prying up large rocks to look underneath, crawling under forsythia bushes, sifting through pine needles, picking raspberries, and standing in mud puddles to feel the mud between our toes. When we had collected enough items, we would traipse back to the house, and she would get down one of my mom’s largest pottery bowls or platters and put it in the middle of the table. She’d start to assemble a miniature world for us. Lumps of moss would became whole hillsides. A collection of twigs became a grove of trees. Tiny pebbles became a rocky shore for a lake. And finally she would find the little rough clay viking figures that my mom would never let us touch, and place them in that world, asking us what the vikings were doing or where the were going--starting a story. Because of her we began to see what had not been seen before. We also began to experience visually shifting scale. 

Grandma Quie encouraged my rock collecting when I was little. She would bring or send me rocks from all over the world as she travelled. Once, when she visited, she brought these little red dot stickers and a blank notebook, and showed me how I should write a corresponding number on the rock and in the notebook, then in the notebook write down what it was, where it was found, and any other notes about it. My drawers full of rocks became an orderly collection. 

As we grew up, the projects she would do with us changed too, but she always wanted us to see some way of engaging the world creatively. 

Once, we were driving back from a trip to an art museum. We were tired and lolling in the back of the car somewhat oblivious to our surroundings, and Grandma pulled over, jumped out and went to speak to two boys who were fishing on a dock. She talked them into selling her a Sunny, a tiny fish, wrapped in newspaper. When we returned home, she put aprons on us, had us dry off the fish while she got out ink, a tray, and a brayer. She told us we were going to make block prints using the fish. I remember the sticky roughness of the fish scales and spines, the sharp smell of the ink, and noticing that thick rice paper swelled like a sponge when we pressed the fish onto it, before it dried. I think most projects would have ended at that point, but Grandma showed us that we needed to number our print, title it, and sign it in pencil. The title would be “Ichthus”. She told us how early Christians used the ichthus as a secret sign that they would draw in the dry dirt with their toe to communicate to others their belief. After the print dried, she matted it. She showed us both spontaneous creativity, and ordered, directed process. 

My dad’s mother taught me how to paint with watercolors. She showed me how to create washes, and to flick paint onto the paper surface to create different effects. She was always working on a painting. Throughout her whole life she took courses on watercolor painting and went on painting trips with her artist friends. She showed me that painting is working at it, and ever evolving. She, like my mom, witnessed to me the work and practice of being an artist. She, too, vigorously embraced the world, the people in it, specially children, and life, almost as an additional force of nature. Once when we had gotten squid as bait for the crab pot, she showed me how to remove the spine/needle inside and pierce the ink bladder of the squid--a living creature containing both pen and ink. 

When I became a mother I felt as though my creative energies had doubled or tripled, rather than losing them, as I had been afraid. I had witnessed in my own body the unimaginable capacity for creating life. When I had twins, I knew it would be a lot of work up front, and it was! But I was also exhilarated at the thought that my “in the trenches” time frame had just exponentially shrunk. In discussing this concept with my friend Anna Hatke, she said, “Motherhood is essentially expansiveness of the soul and that is the same quality that the artist needs.  The time in the trenches of motherhood is essentially training ground for the artist should they happen to be a mother.” I wrote my thesis on AS Byatt, and during my research had run across an interview with her that had really stuck with me. She made a bargain with herself that she would write at least four fewer books in order to have four children. With each pregnancy, she took precautions - mental ones. 'I started putting complicated poetry books in the loo and would sit there learning poetry by heart. I was practising, the way you do exercises to get your figure back, but I was more interested in my mind than my figure. It seemed more important and it still does.'

So, I did put away all my materials for about three years, but I also kept at it mentally. At around the time my eldest daughter was 5, she asked my mom to draw something for her, like a cow. And instead of doing it, mom said, “Why don’t you ask your mom? She can draw.” Gretta looked at me like I had two heads! But I was grateful for that gentle prod, and knew that it was time to start. 

I spent two years getting comfortable with my materials again, becoming technically proficient. I spent time at the National Gallery in their wonderful Drawing Salon programs--so good for yanking me out of what I was normally working on or looking at, or even the materials I was typically using. After I felt comfortable again, I took off about a year. I wanted time to think about what I was going to do. Was I going to just paint pleasant pictures? Would I end up with a stack of lovely paintings on top of my dryer? I wanted to know what I was aiming at. 

Byatt again provoked me. She wrote about art being representative of its time and place. I generally thought fairly poorly of my own time and place. I would much rather be in 1930s England! But I took Byatt’s assertion seriously, and thought that one of the great tragedies of our  Postmodern age is the idea that individual experience actually divorces one person from another--that their experience is so particular that there is no way to truly know or be known by another. 

We experience these linking spots of overlapping existence where we are, in person, sharing a piece of time, creating a link. These cement the present knowing. But then begins the re-telling: the re-telling of similar experiences, memories, and observations. Re-telling in this new context, with these people, expands the related experience itself, and includes them. This, in turn, reinforces the experience of present presence and weaves together the knowledge of what built our histories to this moment. 

The absence of metanarrative makes it impossible for us to see our experiences as the many jewels reflecting the whole that they are. And this leads to art that is preaching rather than creating space for empathy and reflection and connection. When art is seen as reflecting something that is true about our collective lifelong experiences in the world it is lifegiving. When it is seen as another medium to drown out other voices or promote a singular perspective, rather than a unifying one, it only tears down the relationship between the artist and the viewer, and between the viewers amongst themselves. 

I want to argue that landscape is that tangible reality that confronts us with a truth that is bigger than postmodern pastiche or competing narratives of experience. William Wordsworth says in Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, “With an Eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”  Landscape provides a physical, immediate experience to those who venture into it. It provides a bodily memory impressed upon our minds and senses--how often are we surprised by a scent that takes us back to a forgotten memory? Landscape often awakens longings for connection or completion. 

It’s something that one longs to share. By using the tool of abstraction I hoped to get at these qualities of landscape in my paintings. By abstract art, I do not mean non-representational art. I mean that it is getting to the essential qualities of the thing itself, in order to see more clearly. And to be able to communicate in the most basic way, the truth of shared experience. 

In 2008 my husband and I drove up to Baltimore, Maryland to see the exhibit “Finding Our Place in the World” at the Walters Art Museum. Among the many fascinating cartographic treasures on display were Leonardo Da Vinci’s hand-drawn walking map of Florence, Italy; Japanese Buddhist pilgrimage maps marking important overlook viewpoints along the route--emphasizing the process of journey, rather than the topography; an Inuit map carved into the perimeter of a wooden stick--a waterproof, buoyant, marking system of the coastal land formations that were visible from a kayak. And there was a map of the London Tube system. In 1931 Harry Beck redrew the London Tube map as the abstraction of essential information for an underground journey. The actual topography through which the passenger was travelling was totally irrelevant, as was distance between stops, what was relevant was where lines intersected, the order of the stops, and the relative orientation of stations within the city. This idea of abstraction for the sake of clearer navigation fascinated me, and made clear a tension that I had been working through in terms of thinking about art. Abstraction became much more clear to me as a language of expressing the essence of a thing, experience, or place, than purely representational art. 

I see paintings as signposts. They are signposts to the harmony of individual experience of sight, atmosphere, and scale existing between the tension of space and time. They point to something recognizable, a symbol of the thing sought, but they are not the thing itself. They point to the real object: place, person, or thing. They point to cosmos (wholeness), in the midst of chaos, as Madeleine L'Engle would say. 

My hope in painting is to communicate, in some small way, the truth of experience of place, pointing to a time that is recognizable in your own experience, either remembered or hoped for, and so reinforce the essential harmony of our lives in relation to each other and the land. 

In using parts of the land to create landscapes, I experience an even closer bond between the event of being in landscape and the effect that it has had on my creative response to it. In collaborating with my mother, it’s exciting to see the difference in effect that fire and water have on the same minerals. 

I began making paints after taking a tour at a state park where the ranger pointed out a luminous, chalky, and iridescent fossilized extinct clam. He said that the Native American people would make paint out of these, ground up. And it just hit me. I could do that! So that is the first paint I ever made. Since I work in watercolors; I learned that the base for watercolor paints is gum arabic and honey. The ratio is approximately 1:1 for the ground pigment and gum arabic, and then honey added in about 1/4 of that total. 

We have a huge richness in Virginia in terms of the temperate climate and diverse topography--from the ocean to very old mountains, we have living flora throughout the year, and a huge diversity of minerals and fossils. 

There are a few elements that are essential to finding things that will make good paint. In our age of intense specialization of expertise, we have lost the respectful appreciation for, and enjoyment of the creativity and ability of the amateur. One does not have to “be a chemist” or hold a degree in chemistry in order to understand, enjoy, and apply chemistry. Charles Darwin and Mary Anning were devoted amateurs. My friend Anna Hatke told me that “...the word amare in Italian is “to love” ...an amateur works out of love.” We must have the desire to know, in order to begin knowing. That means asking a lot of questions, cultivating curiosity, enjoying the not knowing, and the process of coming to know. It means getting to know the names of the trees and rocks in your backyard, and neighborhood, and region--native, non-native and invasive. In doing this you begin to grow familiar with patterns of where to look for things, and when to expect to find them. You will also be able to identify outliers. And as Robert MacFarlane concludes in his book, The Wild Places, wilderness is everywhere around us, if we only look closely enough. My husband and I have found plum tree gum, a gum arabic substitute, at the Vienna Metro station. I have found oak galls in the verge beside the parking lot at my kids’ school. It also means trial and error. Some things work better than others; individuals are drawn to some things over others. I’m drawn to rocks and minerals, I love the variations, the different textures and the ability to make them more or less fine (in terms of sediment size), I love how they illustrate the flow of the water in a really tangible way. I also love their permanence. I love how they interact with each other--creating dendritic structures and crystals as the paint dries. The organic matter is interesting too, but much more volatile and impermanent. It’s fascinating not only working with different hues, but how the paints push and pull on each other, grow and can be manipulated in texture, granulation, layers. 

Since my first paint made from fossils, I have made paints from all sorts of things, and can point them out or talk through what those are as we walk around the gallery.