Featured painting: THE COUNCIL - Blood Quantum
Watercolor, gouache, graphite & 23 carat raised gold
(mule deer bones, river rock, lake-bed silt, water, firmament & dream catcher netting)
In 2018, I discovered and collected these bones from an abandoned hunting camp high in the San Juan Mountains. Back in BONEYARD Studio, they seemed to arrange themselves in a circle, so I followed along, not knowing where this story would take me. After adding the sky, the center elements, the rocks, vertebrae and the outer ring of silt lake bottom, all painted over a span of several weeks, I completely stalled out. Was it a cell? A mandala? Months passed.
Back in my Lawrence studio and deep into the “Sins & Virtues” series, the idea of adding dream catcher netting to this piece leapt into my mind. So once again, risking the entire painting, I listened to that voice and overlaid the dream catcher imagery along with 23 carat raised gold embellishment. The sky suddenly became the firmament, vertebrae and river rock the council, center the nucleus and the netting a universal connectivity.
Blood Quantum is the process by which the percentage of one’s ancestry determines acceptance into or rejection from the tribe. The bone in the center here could be the “other” encircled by judges. But the reality is that all of these bones are part of the same animal. All things are connected and there is no “other”. Truth. In creating this work, this painting now becomes part of my voice and my truth.
At The Studios at Bristol (719) 658-0121
39542 HWY 149 (mile marker 39.5, between Creede and Lake City) - Creede, CO 81130
Open mid-June thru mid-September
Summer Hours: 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday
