When a collector connects

Twice this week paintings have sold out of my home gallery to collectors who felt what I had felt when I created these works. Four of my paintings have found new homes.

When I am working, I always ask myself "What is the purpose of making this painting? What message and energy will it carry? Does it have a reason for being?"

A reason for being is very important to me. There is always a connecting story in the series that I make. That is probably why there are sometimes months in between series. I have to be excited about the linking essence of each painting in the series.

The first 2 images below are from the series, "The Time of Witness" It took me deep into the lives of many of the strong Mexican women who live in my town. At the time I had a good Mexican friend , Maria Teresa, who had spent 25 years in the States, had been a navy nurse and had returned to Mexico to become more Indigenous every day. She was a practicing shaman and was the first person to tell me that what I thought I saw in the Mexicans' friendly faces was not the truth; they all wear an invisible mask. And they were not "monkeys in zoo" to be photographed, painted and their images made into postcards. Because she knew me and my intentions to portray the strength and wisdom of these incredibly strong women, Maria Teresa personally took me into the homes of several woman that she knew would be of interest to me, introduced me as an artist who was going to make paintings honoring them .

I saw situations I would never have seen without Maria Teresa. Some very poor homes, with dirt floors, no electricity or running water. What I did see was the pride and strength, particularly of the woman in the painting below and she became the star of my solo gallery show. This was the last painting I did of her that sold yesterday.

My soul is nurtured when a viewer reacts to my work with the same connection I felt while painting it and when they want to make that painting a part of their lives, it reassures me that I have spent my life doing the right thing working through the struggle to make my work have a reason for being.



The story of the butterfly painting was posted on this blog in 2012 http://eschwanwinding.blogspot.mx/2012/02/monarch-butterfly-sanctuary.html

Strength of the Years, encaustic on board, 24" x 24"

El Mercado, encaustic on board, 24" x 24"

 

 

 

Monarchs in Mexico, carved encaustic on board. I had just returned from the Monarch sanctuary

"Look at that. She draws!"

Yes, I can draw. I can't remember a time when I didn't draw. It took me until I was in my twenties to understand that some people didn't see the way I do. When people would ask me how I did it, I would reply, "just look at it"

Then, as I got older, artists who either didn't choose to draw or thought they couldn't, would condescendingly look at my work and say, "She draws - it looks just like the model" - as if that were a really bad thing.

I really believe that anyone who wants to draw well, can learn. I used to teach drawing - even to children. Drawing is seeing. It is hand and eye coordination. It teaches one to see space in and around an object or a person. Through drawing, negative space can be understood. When I was in my first year of art school, the classical drawing training I had, helped me to creative my first abstract still life. At 18 years old I suddenly realized what the talk about space relationships was all about.

casein on illustration board, 1953

In the first semester we learned to draw every bone in the body. The second semester it was studying the muscles of the human body; what they did and then draw them without a model for the final exam.

I still sense condemnation about my figurative paintings from some artists. A gallery director told me scornfully, that he didn't like anything figurative. He is an artist who can't draw. My answer was,"Well, I can do both - paint abstractly and non-objectively as well as figuratively"

I spent a month in Italy with a group of artists several years back and received the same scorn. Most of these artists were from New York and anything that wasn't non-objective and black was not respected.

I still practice drawing. Here are some recent sketches:

60 second sketch

Being able to draw, doesn't diminish my ability to make non-objective paintings. It only helps.

2 encasutic faces finished

I softened the background on this so it did not look so much like wallpaper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took this with my iPod and the copper doesn't show up well.

before softening the background

encaustic on board, 24" x 24"

first day

2 paintings of the Into the Silence finished.

2 days ago

 

 

 

15 minute pose, charcoal pencil

15 minutes - charcoal pencil

15 minutes charcoal pencil.

I started drawing in ink. That way I couldn't get too picky with the quick sketches

I went to a life drawing session yesterday. I was a little rusty since I haven't worked from a live model in about 5 years. I warmed up with some quick sketches and we ended with a few 15 minute sketches. I'm definitely going to make this a regular practice.