CampV-Week4 – Cairns

Last week at CampV + A Few Thoughts About Cairns

I spent my final stretch at CampV with the new resident artist, the amazing Laurel Boeck. We became fast friends even after I prepared an almost inedible spicy curry for her on her first night. I’ll never forget her words as she left my cabin to get a few items to mellow the spice, “We’re artists; we can do anything!” Those, my friends, are words to live by! Despite the spicy curry, she spent the next few days with me painting en plein air. I treasure new knowledge gained from other artists, and my time with Laurel was no exception. She’s a skilled artist with a generous soul and the heart of a teacher. As I drove away from CampV on my last day, I felt sad but excited to return to my home studio. I’ll apply my new skills and begin painting significant works for my next series.

The job of an artist is to continue to explore and grow. We must challenge ourselves and try new things with a willingness to take risks. We rearrange our processes and ideas to make things new. This reminds me of cairns, stacks of rocks that mark something significant. They are trail markers, summit indicators, property markers, and memorials. They are dry-stacked, sometimes in simple piles, sometimes in sculptural forms. Since they are dry-stacked, cairns get knocked down and blown over. They are then re-stacked, forever changing form, never permanent.

I’ve recently encountered cairns glued together in gift shops and private homes. In my weird little brain, a needle dragged across the album. Cairns glued together? That’s all wrong, a sacrilege! Why?

Humans desire permanence and predictability, especially as we age. I’m no longer a young woman and have more years behind than in front of me. As I’ve aged, I’ve stayed inside the lines, played it safe, and glued my metaphorical cairns together. Heck, I’ve even mortared them in place! I repeat myself, doing what I know. My residency at CampV disrupted this tendency. It knocked over a few of my most treasured cairns. A growth mentality requires disruption of the status quo and some discomfort. I enjoy this quote from David Bowie:

If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you can be in. Go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.

Whether in shallow water or gluing cairns together, I must go deeper and put the glue away. Cairns are useful markers and way-finders, but it’s okay to knock them down, move them, and rebuild them in a new form.

Check out Laurel’s website – www.boeckstudio.com

CampV Residency – end of week one

April 26, 2024May 29, 2024Leave a comment

It’s the end of my first week at CampV in Naturita, Colorado, where I’ll spend a month as the artist-in-residence. I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity; thank you, CampV! Being forced out of my routine is good medicine because it ramps up creativity and provides a break from everyday responsibilities and distractions.

Upon my arrival, my spring allergies went into hyperdrive. I spent my first week sneezing and blowing my nose nonstop. I’ve had some relief in the last few days and hope for continued improvement as the trees finish pollinating … and the trees! They are lime green with brand-new leaves and stunning when juxtaposed against red canyon walls. I’ll accept sneezing, itchy eyes, and snot in exchange for this visual bounty!

I spent a large portion of my first week pouring over maps, driving, hiking, and getting to know the lay of the land. I know little about this corner of Colorado and am also learning about the area’s history. I’ve taken lots of photos and have done some sketching and painting, albeit minimal, because it forces me to remain in one place for most of the day. I’m a big-picture girl and understand things best when I take in the whole and then dig into the parts and details. I’ve explored from the McPhee Reservoir in Dolores, CO, where a large portion of the Dolores River is held for agricultural and municipal use, all the way to where the Dolores leaves Colorado at the Utah border above Gateway, CO, plus multiple side roads and trails.

So far, I’ve only spent one day painting outdoors, which gave me new respect for en plein air painters, i.e., those who start and finish landscape paintings entirely outdoors. To put it mildly, it didn’t go smoothly for me, and the end result was pitiful. However, I learned a few critical things:

Lesson one: choose your location wisely; I chose mine poorly. As the day passed, my location became an Easy Bake Oven, creating misery. My dog and trusty sidekick, Ollie, kept trying to squeeze himself under the car, all 70 pounds of him. Yes, en plein air people, I had an umbrella but failed to use it correctly. I couldn’t point it in the right direction because the attachment was wrong. I asked the plein air gods to give me wisdom, but they laughed and let me bake, sweat, and squint for hours at a blinding canvas.

Lesson two: Paint dries ludicrously fast in a hot, dry climate, especially when adding Liquin or Galkyd. The gods got a kick out of how fast it became sticky and unmanageable and were probably as amused as watching a cat with tape stuck to its paws. The sticky paint was like moving glue over the surface rather than oil paint. My go-to faves for studio painting don’t work well in this climate.

Lesson three: The sun moves (duh!), so the entire value structure of my painting changed throughout the day. This endlessly perplexed me, and the gods laughed even more. Next time, I’ll quickly map out my value structure and stick with it. My rookie mistake was “correcting” my painting as the day went on. I’ve got to think differently out here.

Lesson four: Wind happens, especially in canyon country, because of the Easy Bake Oven Effect, which creates temperature variations that result in windy afternoons. This was tons of fun and sent my canvas flying into the silty, loose soil. However, my failure with the umbrella worked in my favor in this situation. If I’d attached it, my easel would be somewhere over eastern Colorado right now and listed as a U.A.P. or spying device of unknown origin. I spent lots of time holding things down and got paint everywhere! In addition to paint finding its way onto all the wrong surfaces, the desert also conspired against me. It inserted itself into my canvas, palette, supplies, lunch, eyes, and every crevice of my body, not to mention that Ollie is now tinted reddish-orange, as is my car.

The en plein air painting gods had a knee-slappin’ good time with this vulnerable, wimpy studio painter, a rookie at outdoor painting. I’m now convinced that the badasses of the art world are not abstract expressionists but rather en plein air painters. They deal with whatever gets thrown at them and laugh with the gods.

Next time, I’ll be more prepared. I suspect that going with the flow is critical to doing this well. In addition, I must choose my location wisely, adjust paint mediums to slow dry time, anchor things down or find a wind break, accept foreign objects in my paint, and use a stick-with-it mentality after establishing the initial composition. I’ll paint outdoors for the last half of my residency since my living quarters will be compact, so I have no choice but to figure this out. And who knows, after all of this, maybe I’ll join the ranks of the true badasses of the art world.