Vacations of the Imagination

It's often said that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.  The reality of life can change those plans in a nanosecond.  When it comes to taking time off and time away, those changed plans are not necessarily welcome.  It can be upsetting and energy-draining.  When reality demands focused attention to details and adapting to new processes and procedures, there's no time to squander on self-indulgent feelings of disappointment.  The desire to take a vacation is still there.  However, for an artist there are solutions.  This is a situation when one takes a vacation of the imagination.  There are a few places in this world that I have visited many times because I find so much comfort in being there.  Northern New Mexico is one of those places.  I can go 'home' to the mountains just by closing my eyes and getting deliciously lost in my memories.  It can be very healing.

In years past, I have been 'called' to the mountains to paint the red landscape just north of Abiquiu.  When I am there, I like to pretend that I am Georgia's cousin -- largely because I feel so at home there.  The painting Red Rocks at Ghost Ranch, while a reality-based plein aire work, is also touched by imagination in the rounded rock shapes.  The reality is the intense blue sky and the unbelievably vivid red of the earth.

Red Rocks at Ghost Ranch

Northern New Mexico is a magical place, blending the cultures of Native American and Hispanic peoples with the incredible beauty of the landscape.  For this gringo of Hispanic heritage, the area proved to be a treasure-trove of newly-found structures which are iconic as well as practical.  One such object is the horno, an adobe oven of Moorish-Spanish origin adopted by Native Americans.  An authentic horno was built at Las Parras de Abiquiu, which I painted one cold early morning in November while sitting on the portal of my casita.  I was very intrigued that it was truly a working oven.  The fact that the Big Red Rock at Abiquiu was directly behind it only added to my desire to paint it.  This is more of a reality painting, with no liberties taken, depicting the horno, the adobe wall, the chamisa and the Big Red Rock in the distance.

Las Parras de Abiquiu -- Horno

One of the most vivid aspects of the northern New Mexico landscape is the way the high elevation makes me feel as if I could reach right up and touch the sky overhead.  In creating the painting Taos Rancho, I visited the adobe church during the holiday season.  New Mexicans keep their decorations to a minimum and hang boughs of evergreens.  The deep green combined with the red adobe is stunning.  They add farolitos (what we would call luminaria), which light up the night.  Unlike cityscapes, the farolitos are the only competition for the stars.  In this painting, I combined the reality of the adobe form with a more vividly interpreted starry sky, so you could say this painting is half-reality and half-imagination.

Taos Rancho

Traveling further into the sphere of imagination, I created Sunrise on the High Mesa as a sign of hope.  Seeking the comfort and solace that I have often found in this landscape, I 'went home to the mountains' in my mind.   This was my answer to my vacation plans evaporating.  This painting is all about color...bright, intense, very alive and spiritually renewing.  As one looks across a plain of rocky terrain and simplifies the form, it's easy to see the landscape in a pattern of color blocks.  This work became a spiritual haven for me, and a promise of better days to come.

Sunrise on the High Mesa

As I visited the Land of Enchantment in my imagination, I did not want to just leave the imagery to the rocks, so I decided to explore my memories of the abundant chamisa that grows everywhere.  It's beauty is unique and changes with the seasons.  I have long been charmed by its form, the rhythm of its wind-driven movement, as well as its fragrance.  I love its organic form and chose to paint it in an attempt to capture its energy and life-force.  When one looks at chamisa, in reality, it may not be noticeable at first blush that it has energy at all.  It's part of the magic of the land 'choosing you' that the interrelationship of the terrain, the vegetation and the natural elements imbue everything with the spirituality that the Native Americans hold so sacred.  I have come to appreciate this view of mankind's relationship with the earth, and it nourishes my soul.

Imagined Chamisa

These paintings rely on varying degrees of what we think of as reality.  Singer-songwriter / graphic artist / intellectual Peter Blegvad explores these very processes, their relationships and their effects on creativity in an essay (click to read) on his website, Amateur Enterprises (click to explore further).  Among his ideas on the subject as he worked with specific images, rendering them through the lenses of imagination, observation and memory, he says... 'Thus, one can only attempt to describe what such an image was like.  Painting and drawing mental images confirms that their nature is less of the order of visual data and more that of abstract knowledge.'  To this, I would like to add an additional thought of his... 'To imagine some more or less familiar thing requires a creative engagement with it, a vision which transforms it and makes it new.'

Some of the objects Peter chose to depict in these exercises are familiar, some are more obtuse.  As an example, he created these representations of a lion...

All of these viewpoints are legitimate and necessary to the creative process.  For an artist, these are essential tools for interpreting the world around us.  For me personally, to exercise a blend of realism and imagination and memory is key to my artistic expression.  Reading Peter's thoughts on this subject have echoed things I have long held as truths.  One of the beauties of being an artist is that as a part of the creative process I am allowed the freedom to interpret and put my personal stamp on the images I create. 

I am grateful for the fact that I can take a vacation of the imagination any day, any hour that I so choose...and I do...!