In the Fall of 2012 I stepped into Peggy Zehring's Experimental Painting class at the La Veta School of the Arts. Now this may seem like a "ho-hum" to you but for me it was a Mount Everest climb. You see I had condemned my life to be "artless" from age 11 onward. Mom had taken me and my brother, Ted, to the Albright Art School in Buffalo NY (why, I don't remember). The class was held in a conservatory filled with plants, humid and lush - a lovely place to incubate talent. As Ted and I began to paint, the instructor nosed over and glued himself to Ted's work (which was/is so bright/ full of love), hovering and coaching. Each passing moment brought greater dis-ease to my palette. It's true the subject, plants, was green to begin with but my jealousy of Ted's attention and capacity moved the effort into Flourescent, no neon, hues. I left promising NEVER to paint again. And I didn't.
It took a lot of failures to get my butt into a creative space and place - not art failures - life screw-ups, I know you know what I mean . And it took Peggy coaxing me from her deep artistic heart to "find my mark". It was like a step "into the valley of death" for me. What "mark"? What's that? HELP!!!
Peggy is a renown artist, a student and follower of Wassily Kandinsky (Wiki him), and for me it was more about trusting her and the timing. She said... Pick a color. Pick a tool, a brush, a rag, a chain. Put some marks on the canvas. EXPLORE. What feels good? What color(s) lights my fire? Choose them. Do you like slopping water all over the canvas? Do you like it filled with grit, sand, ashes, tree branches? Be like a kid again. DO WHATEVER FEELS LIKE YOU - not what someone else might like - but FEELS like you (and what you like). With the eye of a good teacher Peggy watched for the fundamentals - enough dark, enough light, balance, weight, composition AND the insidious "making it please others" (designer art). She promised that "My Mark" would show up, and when it did it would be undeniable. It would always be my "mark". I would know it; others would recognize it ALWAYS. There was no escaping it. Marks evolve, she said, along with the artist, but there is always a distinquishing, unique quality that belonged only to one artist.
Well, okay..... I was skeptical, hesitant, embarrassed, AND, for some reason unknown to me, I kept showing up for classes. I kept making a mark. In time I could begin to see that I did have a way of expressing on canvas that was MINE. And I couldn't get away from it. I think you'll see it in the early pieces I've included here. There was always a certain swirling, an indistinct backdrop of wash, cosmic motions, a preferred color palette. Tons of energy it seemed. A potential not yet massed into form. A desire. An inarticulate intricacy. A blending but not yet done. At least that's how I saw them. What do you think?
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