Life is imperfect. I know that’s a ridiculously over-simplified statement that hardly bears saying. But, even so, I’ve fought against that idea my whole life. You see, in spite of life’s imperfections, I somehow thought I was meant to be perfect within it (does that sound familiar to any of you?). Yes, little Jeane Weigel was born to break all the existing laws of physics in order to be perfect. So every time I made mistakes (and you know those times were legion) I beat myself up (again, I’m guessing this sounds all too familiar to many of you).

In fact I’m seriously thinking, now, that this intense need for perfection, my knee-jerk need to be good (which was implanted in my child-psyche along with razor sharp consequences should I fail) may be, at least in part, a significant reason I had a shingles outbreak in the first place (any of you who have been reading the blog for awhile know I’ve been troubled by shingles for roughly 2 ½ years).

And possibly, in part because of this intense drive, I am among one in twenty shingles sufferers who end up with prolonged damaged nerves or Postherpetic Neuralgia, as it’s called. This means I’ve been in serious pain for 2 ½ years. Seriously.

Sometimes the pain has been great enough to test my life view. And, at times, I’ve felt so lost I was prepared to leave this world entirely. I was ready to cut and run. Except for the animals. I wouldn’t abandon them.

Yesterday Kim and I (see previous post A Very Mini Artist’s Colony in New Mexico) headed down the mountain in the dark of predawn…

… (with a stop at The Pantry, one of our favorite Santa Fe breakfast spots)…

… to go to the UNM Hospitals Clinical Neurosciences Center in Albuquerque.

I had an appointment with Dr. Koshkin who was, in my mind, supposed to cure me—to somehow take away or lesson the pain. He was supposed to do this for me. And, instead, he told me to stop fighting—to accept that I’m going to live with PHN for the rest of my life, in all likelihood, and even if he did the last remaining procedure I haven’t yet tried and, even if it was successful, I’ll certainly have to live on pain meds for the rest of my life anyway.

He said I needed to know that so I could stop fighting and accept it. Wow.

That, in a nutshell, is the major lesson of my life being handed back to me. Here is this medical professional, this wonderful scientific specialist, telling me in plain English to get back at learning what I came here to learn: to stop fighting life and, instead, accept it in whatever imperfect form it may take. To stick, no matter how hard that might get. That it is my work to do, not his.

I say it again. Wow.

I live with this little red pit bull named Scrumpy. She came to be with me about 4 months ago, in from the dark woods, covered with deep, infected bite wounds—a real sorry little bundle of a dog. You should know that I’ve been a big proponent of pit bulls for decades now, firmly believing they’re great, intelligent dogs that have been given a bad rap. And I know that’s true. But what I’m also seeing first hand is that breeding does, in fact, dictate something. As my vet said, pit bulls were born to kill. And, while that isn’t exactly true, they were originally bred for blood sports such as bull-baiting and bear-baiting in pits for human enjoyment (aren’t you sometimes just so ashamed to be human?), there is an inherent aggression bred into them. Which is why I suppose human beings have been turning them into guard dogs and fighters.

But here is this dear little lost soul, so earnest in her desire to do right, to be the good dog (that sounds vaguely familiar)…

… but who also has a streak in her that is hard-wired to attack cats—my cats. No, this won’t work. Twice I tried to give her back to my vet so she could be placed in a good home. The last time Dr. Ramsay sent me researching pit bull rescue sites. And the fact is this: in New Mexico anyway, a pit bull is destined, the greatest percentage of the time, to be badly mistreated. And a pit bull with behavioral issues will be put down. It’s as simple as that. So there it is. I’m her last chance.

I looked into those sincere red-brown eyes and decided I couldn’t turn my back on her. She clearly wanted to do what I wanted her to do, so it was up to me to figure out how to make my desires known to her.

She and I, together, would begin the project of rewiring her cat-hostile brain. And, at the same time, I would have to keep my cats safe while she was learning. We would all do the work together.

But the bottom line was that I would stick. Period. No other option.

And then there is my relationship with Kim. You all know how important he and his friendship are to me, how much a part of my life he’s become. But ours isn’t the shape I thought a relationship would take. It’s different. Completely different. And it’s not perfect—there it is again that attachment to perfection—it’s not always easy. So that “quitter” part of me sometimes wants to cut and run.

But something vital I’ve come to know is this: no matter how hard it is to hold on sometimes, we are not disposable. Our selves, our dogs, our relationships, are not to be shunted aside when they become too difficult. We, all of us, have something. Not a one of us gets through this life without our share of sorrow and pain, without the whole of the human experience. I know there are times to let go and times to hold on. Perhaps getting older gives us the grace, the wisdom, to know which is which.

Here I am back in Albuquerque, facing that imperfect news and I look out the car window and up there…

… far up ahead, up in those snowy mountains in the distance, sitting on a ridge line on the shoulder of those Sangre de Cristo Mountains, at 8500’, is my home.

My home. It sits there waiting for me, in the middle of what used to be Nelson Martinez’s family’s alfalfa field, pushed up against the land grant (as if for quick escape), in this rugged little village called Truchas. It is an old and battered village, strong and tough. But she holds my heart in her work-hardened, dirt-cracked hands. And I find she is also kind.

So, carrying this saddened spirit within me, as I reach for her succor, her compassion, I lean into her silence. And I come to know that this wise old one that has known more suffering than I ever will, is welcoming me home. There, also, is the imperfect dog, are the imperfect relationships, waiting for me and it is almost funny how the universe must be smiling at me now, at the (yes, damn it) imperfect me, at showing myself to me.

And I know I will stick. With the village, the house, the dog, the friendships, with me. It is, perhaps, the coming of a wise old time in me, when I know it’s better to stay than go, to not fight.

As Dr. Koshkin said, I need not to fight anymore. And that simply has to be an inside job. I need not to fight anymore.

I am. It is…

… maybe not the way I thought I/it would be, should be, but nonetheless here anyway.

So let me take that next step… imperfectly… into the shared human experience I’ve been struggling so hard to avoid, and leap, this time eyes wide open, and suppose the net MAY appear?

Or not… And, if not, we’ll pick up the pieces and go from there.

Love to you all,

Jeane

It’s been far too long since I’ve written to you all and there are so many reasons for that. One is that I was busy working with a friend to present a woman from our community as a CNN Hero nomination. Sadly, we didn’t win and Kathleen Ramsay did not receive the recognition we feel she deserves, nor did she receive the award money which would have expanded her cause so much. But now I’m free to tell you all about her, her work and her mission.

Let me just say as an opener, Kathleen has given mouth to mouth to a rattlesnake. Now, on that basis alone, I think she should have won, right?

I first met Dr. Kathleen Ramsay the day the vet I’d been using couldn’t fit my dog in for a serious crisis. I called Ramsay’s clinic and she took him in. His hind leg had to be removed in emergency surgery.

While sitting and comforting my boy, as they were readying him for surgery, a couple came in to pick up their dog. They peered in as Ramsay opened the barred door and the woman gasped and started to cry. She kept saying, “She’s back! It’s our girl!”

I gleaned from their conversation that the dog had been shot in the face. Ramsay explained to them what she’d done. Apparently, she’d developed the procedure after reconstructing the face of a bear that had been hit in the head with a hatchet and then caught in a trap. (I learned later that she brought him in with the hatchet intact, splitting his skull down the middle—it’s a long story, yes, she has lots of them—but she named the bear Davey Crockett and when his fur came back in, that slash grew back white).

She told them that the sinuses were always the biggest challenge but that their dog’s surgery had been a success. She had used bone from its floating rib, like the one we all have, to form the dog’s sinuses.

And fashioned some plastic straws to function as the nasal passages until everything healed and she could remove them. Not only had she saved this dog’s life, she’d also reconstructed her face bringing her all the way back to looking like her old self.

A miracle I thought. And it’s true: Dr. Kathleen Ramsay is herself the miracle.

Kathleen Ramsay describes her childhood this way: “I was born in Los Alamos, which at the time was run by the Atomic Energy Commission. My father was a chemist working on explosive detonation. So, it was a different kind of community. Almost all the adults had master’s degrees and Ph.D.’s, and there wasn’t a lot for kids to do. But I did have a horse. I’d disappear after school and come home at dark, and if Bobbins ever beat me home, Mom knew there was a problem.”

On his back, she explored the vast acres of ancient desert both up high on the mesa where Los Alamos sits and deep into its surrounding canyons. Having been born with a keen curiosity and a scientific mind, she studied the wildlife that proliferated there and the land itself, getting to know and love the fragile ecosystem of the high desert.

At 18 she discovered her first tumor and was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder “…that causes tumors to form on nerve tissue. These tumors can develop anywhere in your nervous system, including your brain, spinal cord, and nerves…” mayoclinic.org. She still has it today. She used to go four times a year for chemo. At 62, just this year, she finally has that down to two.

In her junior year at New Mexico Tech, considered to be one of the best small science and engineering schools in North America at the time, Kathleen and her roommate were discussing their futures. Neither could choose between being a vet or a doctor, so both decided to apply to a veterinary school and a medical school. They agreed they’d take on the studies and the profession of whichever one accepted them.

They were both accepted into Colorado State University’s Graduate College of Veterinary Medicine. They were going to become vets.

It was during her veterinary training that an event occurred to shape her life. Somebody brought in a golden eagle caught in a trap, flapping and screaming, in pain and distress. At the time there were no wildlife veterinary classes and there were no wildlife vets. But it was in that moment she knew she would have to find a way to offer these birds a second chance.

Kathleen said, “I’d decided that the one thing I wanted to do was to make a difference for these animals.” In addition, she thought, “If I could teach one kid every year the value of the animals they have around them, I’ve done my work in society.”

She and a friend who, later, ended up working for the Albuquerque Zoo, along with several other veterinary students, decided to get an exotic animal club going at Colorado State University. So in 1977, when they were Freshmen and Sophomores, they got it started, and that was the beginning of avian medicine. “So, how did we learn?” she repeats my question, “We’re still learning.”

She tried working for a more conventional veterinarian practice but found her employers unhappy when she’d sneak in at night to perform surgery on injured wildlife.

So in 1984, Ramsay opened a clinic next door to her home that would become her veterinary practice. She called it Cottonwood Veterinary Clinic. That practice welcomed the wild, and it didn’t take long before she started getting calls from all over the state. This was what she’d envisioned and dreamed of, a place where injured raptors would find medical care and rehabilitation, but her little facility was getting thinly stretched with all the cats and dogs that were coming in as well.

In 1986 she created Northern New Mexico Raptor Rehabilitation and Education Center on the same land and began repairing and rehabilitating the magnificent birds in earnest. She addressed their medical needs in the clinic’s operating room but then housed her wild patients, for the duration of their recovery and rehabilitation, in her “backyard.”

This consisted mainly of enclosures and flights. Flights are structures that give birds the length of flight space they need to build up their muscle and stamina as they recover from their injuries and are rehabilitated. They are built in different lengths to accommodate all levels of a bird’s recovery—starting first with a short flight and increasing the length to accommodate stronger and stronger birds.

They’re very expensive to construct so Ramsay doesn’t currently have one large enough for a full-grown eagle. They must either go to Desert Willow Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Carlsbad, (Desert Willow houses the largest flight cage in New Mexico. But even more important than it’s size is the fact that it is round. This allows a bird to fly more naturally, as it would in the sky, without corners), or the Santa Fe Raptor Center located in El Rito. Both centers are operated by individuals who were mentored by Ramsay.

Although Ramsay’s real interest, in the beginning, was raptors, more and more mammals were coming in, so her Center would later morph into the Wildlife Center, which moved, eventually, to the old Rio Arriba County Fairgrounds land. By then Ramsay had expanded her work to include more mammals.

When asked during an interview with National Geographic what prompted her to start treating other kinds of animals she said, “Well, all these mammals kept showing up. What was I supposed to say, sorry, I only do birds, so now I have to kill you?”

Eventually, her dream outgrew the land on which Kathleen and her husband had settled. While keeping Cottonwood Veterinary Clinic in place, they bought seven acres five miles north of Española and put in a septic system and water. That was all they could manage at the time. So for the first ten years, they lived in a trailer as they built what they needed and could afford. The property continued to grow organically from that.

Three of those seven acres are dedicated to her wildlife rehab work. There are two tall locked security fences past which few people are admitted. And no talking is allowed beyond them. She doesn’t want her wild ones getting used to hearing human voices. This is only one of the practices put in place to keep the animals untamed.

The enclosures that hold the furred and the feathered are also situated to give them as much of a sense of safety as is possible. Unlike zoo animals, they are not on display and they have plenty of places to hide from humans.

Kathleen is virtually on call 24/7, every day, year in, year out. Her emergency room is always open for wild animals, and in the summer, when all of her enclosures are full to bursting, the overflow comes into her home. It’s not unusual for her to call out upon entering her household, “Don’t use the downstairs bathroom I have a hawk in there…” or a bobcat, a raccoon, a fawn, a litter of foxes…

They come to her broken and scared, weary of the world, some near death, and she takes them in.

Or she goes out across the desert, into the forests to wrangle them herself. She patches them up if she can, rehabilitates them, fattens them up and releases those that can make it, back into the wild, often driving 100 miles or more to personally release them back from where they came.

She has sculpted a new beak for an eagle (as well as those of songbirds and parakeets… you name it) using fiberglass epoxy resin. She thought of it because she regularly uses the same resin on turtle shells. I guess when a shell splits, a common injury when they’re hit by cars, it won’t grow back for a year, so Kathleen started mending them with the resin very successfully.

She’s put “pins in Raptors’ wings, set broken limbs, fattened up malnourished frogs, rebuilt the tongue of a toad…” The surprises and complications are endless, but it seems she can figure out a solution to almost any trouble a wild animal finds itself in. Although roughly 45% are too damaged to save, at least she can humanely put them down and release the other 55%.

If there’s no money for costly rehab, she either finds it or absorbs it. But she works at giving every savable animal she takes in a second chance, all the while pestered with having to take time out to fundraise. She says fundraising is probably her biggest issue.

At 55, Kathleen’s husband, Lou, was diagnosed with a progressively debilitating brain disorder, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, PSP, but Kathleen saw the signs of it long before that. By the time he was finally diagnosed he was 7 years into the disease. It advanced to total incapacity by 2011. She managed his care at home for the first twelve months, once he’d come to that, all the while maintaining her veterinarian practice. But it forced her to leave the Wildlife Center, by then strong enough to do without her. These days it’s called the New Mexico Wildlife Center and it’s still thriving.

Eventually, they were able to get round-the-clock in-home nursing care, paid for by Los Alamos Labs and the Department of Energy’s Crisis Management Funds, which continued for three more years until Lou was gone. The Lab has a set aside for such people because of the high incidence of various forms of cancer and cancer-like illnesses surrounding the area. They do this not because anything has been proved, but because the question exists and it’s not been unproven.

In 2003 Kathleen broke her back while rescuing a bobcat cub. She’d followed it up a cottonwood tree and the thick branch she was standing on had rotted in its middle. It gave way as she struggled to reach the animal and she fell 20 feet, landing on her bottom. That drove her spine from her pelvis up her back to the base of her neck, shattering two vertebrae. The paramedics “were just scared to death of that bobcat,” Ramsay said, her face crinkling in a smile. Her son, aged 7 or 8 at the time, darted the cat the next morning and brought it in. And Kathleen had metal rods placed in her back.

It was during her convalescence that she and several friends were kicking around the whole wounded wildlife problem. They were asking what was needed next. And that’s how the four or five of them conceived of the Foundation Ramsay was later to create.

On July 15, 2012, she co-founded Land of Enchantment Wildlife Foundation (LEWF) with those same friends, and on June 30, 2014, LEWF received its 501 (c) 3 non-profit status from the IRS.

LEWF’s mission is to help the wildlife of New Mexico by providing financial and logistical aid to the people who help rehabilitate the animals of New Mexico. This will be done by providing those operations with assistance in building enclosures, transportation, medical treatment, food, and volunteers, as well as wildlife education.

There is no ego in any of this. Ramsay says it’s never been about her. It’s always about the animals. She doesn’t compete with other wildlife organizations in the state. In fact, she created the Foundation in order to support not only her own efforts but theirs as well.

As to her veterinary practice, she opened Cottonwood Veterinary Clinic, consciously choosing to put it in Española, New Mexico, a poor, somewhat troubled area, because there just weren’t any clinics there (it wasn’t where the money was). And she set her fees accordingly, lower than the going rate in the more prosperous surrounding towns like Santa Fe and Taos.

Over the decades since 1984, she has educated and guided a population that did not grow up respecting animals, which saw animals as a commodity, and has shepherded them into being loving pet owners. And if ever someone cannot afford a necessary procedure, she’s set money aside to help. It’s called the “Ginger Fund,” another long story… In my decade of sitting in the waiting room, I see the change.

The other education taking place in her clinic goes to the many interns she welcomes. From her waiting room, I’ve seen some tough-looking, tattooed, young people turned into capable, nurturing, knowledgeable caregivers. And some of them have gone on to become vets themselves, one of whom works with Dr. Ramsay at her Cottonwood Veterinary Clinic. But all of them are gaining a second chance because Kathleen Ramsay has seen their worth and, like the animals, she’s intent on giving them that.

Ramsay’s wild patients represent the untamed world we’re running out of space for. So she takes them deeper into the mountains and forests, back to where she hopes the sweep of time may forget them and leave them in peace.

Winston Churchill famously said that “Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”

And mercifully, Dr. Kathleen Ramsay does just that.  She continues.

Love to you all,

Jeane

When asked what she thinks her biggest contribution is to her community, Kathleen Ramsay says, without hesitation, that it is her Cottonwood Veterinary Clinic in Española, New Mexico. It’s a fairly rural area, and quite poor. She says, “Probably 60% of people living there make $10,000 per year. What am I supposed to say—give me 6 months of your family’s food budget or I kill your pet?” Accordingly, she has priced her services well below other vets in the surrounding area.

And she has personally seen to it that her community, her clients, can afford the very best medical care for their animals no matter their status and means. If they can only afford $10 per month on their bill, so be it. She carries a considerable debt in order to accomplish this. When asked why she does it she says, “Because it’s whom I am. I have a big heart.” Let me just say I consider that to be a hefty understatement.

It is through the clinic that she mentors interns and volunteers, offering opportunities to local kids they simply wouldn’t get if not for her. It’s quite stunning to think of how many of them may be out there sewing their own versions of Ramsay’s training, across the state and beyond, and likely mentoring their own local kids.

National Geographic said it this way; “They repay her by taking a deeper understanding of American wildlife and respect for ecosystems back to their own neck of the woods.”

For her efforts, she was recognized by the city of Española with an appreciation award for both her Cottonwood Veterinary Clinic and her work with wildlife.

She was appointed by Governor Bill Richardson to the Board of Veterinary Medicine where she served almost 12 years. In that time, she helped codify many regulations for veterinarians around the state. She has also helped Game and Fish codify regulations on Wildlife Rehabilitators across New Mexico.

On July 15, 2012, she co-founded Land of Enchantment Wildlife Foundation (LEWF). Through this non-profit Ramsay offers her extensive knowledge of wildlife management, as well as hands-on help wherever needed, to other wildlife rescue programs across the state.

While this support focuses on rehabilitation and the construction of rehabilitation facilities[i], it also gives her the opportunity to award financial grants to her own and other wildlife operations for any needs[ii]. She will give whatever help is necessary, that is within her power to give[iii].

LEWF focuses as well on education and outreach[iv]. They are, “… open and willing to provide assistance and wildlife education throughout the state of New Mexico.”[v]

In 2016 she was one of five New Mexicans who received the Governor’s True Hero Award. She was recognized for her work to help low-income families care for their pets, and her training and mentoring of others, teaching them to care for New Mexico’s animals and wildlife.

It is still sometimes difficult for Kathleen to maneuver through all of the rules and protections set out by the different agencies. She must deal with all the counties, the state, the federal government, and Game and Fish, not to mention the several distinct Indian Nations we have here in New Mexico. It’s not easy to stay on the right side of things when there is an animal suffering, which Ramsay cannot tolerate. She will do what it takes, even if her license to practice is threatened.

To say that Dr. Kathleen Ramsay is a visionary is not enough. Simply put, she is irreplaceable. But she’s worked hard over the course of her career to be sure there will be many hands to take over for her when she retires.

But I was there when she handed over a Great Horned Owl to the man who’d saved it, rehabilitated and ready to be set free into its forest where it had been found…

I was present for the turning loose of three fat and healthy bears (I overheard one of the game and fish guys say with no small amount of satisfaction that Ramsay always releases fat bears)…

… and I was in attendance at the freeing of a screech-owl in my own small village that sits high up in the mountains of northern New Mexico.

And, personally, I can’t imagine any of us doing without her. Ever.

I’ve referred to her as a force of nature and I don’t think that’s far off. She certainly is enough to make me consider that the troubles of the world, as horrific as they can be, are being steadily chipped away at by people like Kathleen Ramsay. And maybe that’s almost enough.

Love to you all,

Jeane

I woke up at 1:30 this morning thinking about those things that we all, whether we’re working artists without a secure income or not, toss and turn over. Every one of us has something that wakes us in the night. I reached for my kitty, Tobey, who always sleeps with me and, as if the room had sent out a silent shiver, the other cats arrived offering their support.

At 3:00 I decided to get up. Turning on the bedside lamp, I put my feet on the ground, careful not to step on a soundly sleeping Kelee (see previous post A Three-Legged Man of the West). I lit a fire in the wood heater, and by 4:00 knew what I needed to do. I got in the car and headed over to Hand Artes Gallery where Kim is living for the winter (see previous post Living in an Art Gallery). He’s usually up by then and I knew the lights would be on if he was.

There’s a place on my 3/4 mile long dirt road where I can see the gallery sitting parallel to it, but I couldn’t tell if it was lit or not. Holding my breath and coming down off that last rise, I saw it: The kitchen windows glowed, shining like honey-colored beacons. Drawn to the light, I drove in, parked, and walked into that warm, old, farm kitchen without knocking.

Kim took one look at me and said, “Coffee?”

I think we all know that in times like these there’s really nothing to be said. But I said it anyway. And Kim answered me with this: “But you have options.”

The ground shifted under my feet, a kind of tectonic slide rumbled and clanked in my psyche, and I FOUND myself in that warm kitchen. It may sound entirely too simple, but I remembered who I am.

Before anything else was said, I noticed the boots warming on top the stove…

… the mugs standing ready, the french press brewing…

… Kim, washing up some dishes, admiring an old cast iron skillet as he’s putting it away. He’d bought it when he first came to Santa Fe from an old guy long gone now. He told me about the man and his shop and I thought how rich life can be when the things we keep, the items that continue with us, have stories…

… and I remembered that all of these, these simple beauties, are available to us whenever we take the time to look; when we stand still, inside our bodies, long enough to see.

I started taking pictures–because I am meant to preserve the stories, to document, in words and photos, an on-going portrait of the simple, beautiful, artful lives we are living up here on the High Road to Taos, in this small village of Truchas, in the mountains of northern New Mexico; living our lives as though time stood still–because I simply must. And it is important.

Kim asked if I’d like to go get the dogs and take a walk on the land grant in the dark. Absolutely. We went to my place, still lit from my leaving, and gathered the dogs.

And after awhile, standing out there silent in the dark, the dogs gone to their own explorations, I remembered that before Kim, this is where I came on these dark nights of the soul–out here in this black forest, lit by stars or moon or snow or nothing–I would regain my footing here, I would remember who I am. Under these vast heavens I would feel my part in it all. I would remember my “place in the family of things” as Mary Oliver so beautifully wrote in her poem, Wild Geese–just as in that kitchen on this morning.

Kim had his own work to do today and I wanted to write to you, so I drove him back home to the gallery. And on my return, I was gifted with this stunning sunrise.

I stopped along the way to grab pictures because I wasn’t sure if it’d still be happening when I arrived home. Sometimes they’re gone in minutes.

But this one waited for me and gave me this, which I took as a sort of thumbs up from the universe, a kind of celebration, welcoming me home, back to self.

I began this morning challenging Joseph Campbell and his immortal words, words I’ve held as true for so long: “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”  “Well, Joseph Campbell,” I wanted to scream, “… where are MY friggin’ open doors?”

But I realize, now, I’m standing in them.

Love to you all,

Jeane

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Kim and I (see previous post A Very Mini Artist’s Colony in New Mexico) have started going to the LaFonda Hotel in Santa Fe fairly regularly for breakfast these days. It’s a wonderful place because of its history alone. In fact historical records suggest it sits on the oldest hotel corner in America. When the Spaniards founded Santa Fe in 1607, records show an inn, or fonda was among the first businesses established at this location.

And we don’t even have to be on vacation to enjoy it. We get to drive down the mountain whenever we want to pay it a visit.

But, truthfully, the real reason we go is because they make the very best brioche French toast you could ever hope to have.

In fact it’s pretty addictive, to the degree that our once-a-month splurge has stretched into… well, I don’t want to get too specific about that. So the historical part is just a great bonus.

And, as it turns out, Kim also has familial ties to the hotel.

Let me tell you a small story about Kim’s grandfather and the La Fonda Hotel. You should know that I have only bits of this story to go on and am taking some probable flights of fancy with the rest.

Anyway, his grandfather, Ezra Winter, was a well-known mural painter from the early 1920s through the 1940s. He did massive projects during his career including Radio City Music Hall, the Library of Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Chamber of Congress, and Cornell University, to name a few.

He worked from a studio on the upper floor of Grand Central Station for much of his career where he also taught art classes. His papers are kept in the Archives of American Art in the Smithsonian Museum.

In 1926 Ezra came to Santa Fe. Kim knows this because he found a list of notable arrivals to the La Fonda Hotel posted in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper dated January 4, 1926.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine Santa Fe back then—Canyon Road was probably still a little dirt wagon trail leading, literally, into the canyon. There were packed dirt roads instead of today’s blacktopped highways.

Low-density population, traditional ways, pinon smoke in the air… My heart aches with longing to have been there then. I can only imagine that, compared to the bustling New York City of the time, Santa Fe truly was the Wild West.

Anyway, Ezra came and the reason Kim knew to search for him in Santa Fe in 1926 is because of some letters that were found tied up with string in among Ezra’s belongings many years ago, after he was gone. There were several from an artist named Margaret (Peggy) Ruse who, it turns out, had been an assistant to Ezra in New York for three years. She came to New Mexico in 1925 but I don’t know what month. It could have been as late as December of 1925 and then Ezra arrived the next month, on January 4, 1926, seemingly following her. Peggy was 26 at the time and Ezra was just a couple months shy of forty. It seems fairly certain that he came to see Peggy.

We often don’t recognize small but important moments in our lives when we are living them. Significant events can pass us by with barely a notice and it’s not until we look back on them that we know. I’ve often said the greatest gift of aging is perspective. There comes a time in most of our lives when the sheer number of years we’ve lived, along with our varied experiences, have taught us some important truths. We come to know, for instance, that time really does mend broken hearts; that we don’t get to take back the things we do so we’d better take care in doing them; and that we should act when something draws us—a town, a way of life, a job, an opportunity to love.

I’ve done some Google searches looking into Peggy Ruse. There isn’t a lot since there were no computers back then and not much has been digitized, but I did find a paragraph about her in a book titled, Women of the West, A Series of Biographical Sketches of Living Eminent Women in the Eleven Western States of the United States of America, Copyright 1928, Publisher’s Press, Los Angeles, Ca. She lived at 630 Canyon Road and eventually opened a restaurant/tea house/evening spot called the Apache Club at 117 Palace Avenue.

I have no idea what made Peggy leave New York for the west. Had she been having an affair with Ezra that had come to an end? Did she need to get away because of that? Or had she come west, as so many others did, to try her artistic luck in Santa Fe? Or both?

There is some evidence that they worked together on a project of watercolor designs from ancient and Indian patterns that are now housed in The Mary Ann Beinecke Collection of Decorative Arts at the Clark Art Museum Library in Williamstown, Massachusetts, one of the major art history reference libraries in the country. Some of the paintings are signed by Ezra and some by Peggy. Did they make these watercolors when Ezra came to visit do you think? I can find no record of that having been the case.

One has to wonder, with his extremely busy social and business life, what was it about Peggy Ruse that touched Ezra enough for him to keep her letters? And, since I’ve located a trail indicating Peggy moved back to New York City where she became an illustrator (but I haven’t found a date yet), I wonder, did they ever meet again? Did they ever work together again?

I was never able to learn anything about their relationship. But I like to think of the two of them spending a late winter week or two, perhaps as much as a month, together within the spirit, light and magic of New Mexico. For a man harried by important and huge commissions, along with their deadlines, and a passel of assistants to manage, I like to think that this remarkable land, and Peggy, gave him some deep rest and, perhaps, a sense of peace. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the reason his family still has her letters these 88 years later.

Some of us leave grand murals behind as witness to our having lived, or children, and then their children, ongoing throughout the span of time presumably. Others, like Peggy who never married and had no children, leave just a whisper: illustrations in a rare, collectible, children’s book called, The Little Old Woman Who Used Her Head, or her letters to Ezra, held together by a bit of string, and unearthed by his family, telling a small part of a story that once was.

There’s little that is certain in this life except for birth and death. We know we’re born and we know we’ll die. But what we do in between is entirely and wholly up to us. Do we wait wishing for a love that will never be, as it seems possible Peggy did, taking her own life in 1938? Or drive ourselves too hard as, perhaps, Ezra did, taking his own life in 1949? Did Peggy and Ezra live a love story that ended too soon? Were their lives forever colored by that? We’ll never know.

But when I look at the words, pen on paper, written by this vibrant, talented woman in Santa Fe back in 1926, it is hard to believe she no longer exists. And Ezra, for all of his majestic murals, gone also—both of them just ghosts of memory.

Then it comes so clear to me: life is not what we leave behind. That’s history. Life is the living of it. Whether we’re remembered by history or family or no one at all, we are here to live it now, in these moments when our hearts are beating in our chests, when our eyes gaze across the great beauties…

So it is for us to breathe in all of this life, to laugh as much as possible, to soothe our wounds and the wounds of others, to find a truth and live it as much as we can bear, to love as truly as we can, to take what this life has to offer and turn it into what we need, what has meaning for us… to recognize the small but important moments in our lives when we’re living them.

And the point is to live them now. As Rilke says in his Letters to a Young Poet, “Live everything… Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

A movie was made in 1949, a little more than 20 years after Ezra visited Santa Fe, starring and directed by Robert Montgomery, called Ride the Pink Horse. It features the hotel rather prominently. There are these little tables just outside the enclosed patio where Montgomery sits with another actor who’s having breakfast. Kim and I always choose that table.

And we think of Ezra in 1926, perhaps sitting exactly there, along with his lovely artist companion, Margaret (Peggy) Ruse.

Love to you all,

Jeane

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Call me silly and romantic (and I can assure you that I’m both) but I have always adored the song from A Chorus Line titled What I Did For Love. I am moved by it, I believe, because it epitomizes what I think we all inherently understand: that we human beings are best when we are acting on behalf of what is in us to do. Some call it what we “ache for.” Joseph Campbell famously put it as “… following our bliss.” It’s true that many of us don’t know what that is, but that’s a topic for another post, a good one I think…

Anyway, I thought of the song because I was sitting down to write about a visit I had with Guy Cross, the editor and publisher of THE Magazine in Santa Fe. He kindly took the time to come up to Truchas to see my show at Hand Artes Gallery and to share a meal with Kim and me.

Guy started THE Magazine twenty-three years ago, I think he said it was, because he had a mother who took him around to all the galleries and museums in New York City when he was growing up and he came to appreciate art and artists.

He wanted to create a place where they would be intelligently and objectively reviewed, where the reader would be exposed to and engaged by a spirit of adventure and new ideas; to be a “visible and viable presence in the local, regional, national, and international art communities.”

No small feat. But he’s done that.

And he took the time to come to Truchas because twenty-three years later he still has a lust for finding what’s new and who may be doing it.

Having spent part of an afternoon with Guy, another of my favorites springs to mind. It’s a quote by Henry David Thoreau:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”

To the very small degree I know Guy Cross, that is him, spot on.

Oh, and that meal, it was made by Kim so you know it was good. In fact we’ll be publishing the recipe for the potato/mushroom dish he served in the next few days. That’s a promise.

Love to you all,

Jeane

Kim and I (see previous post  A Very Mini Artist’s Colony in New Mexico) got up early the other day and walked the dogs in the pitch black of a morning, a full moon resting above the lights of Truchas…

… and headed out on a journey just as the sun was rising…

… driving through ancient villages along the High Road to Taos, most settled in the 1700s…

… high up over a mountain pass, winding down, down, down…

… to the eastern side of the Sangre de Cristo mountains that I see from my house on the west side…

… into the little town of Mora which was founded in 1835 and sits at 7,100 feet above sea level. While I was looking for Mora’s statistics, I found that it’s, “… mentioned in Willa Cather‘s 1927 novel Death Comes for the Archbishop,” and that, “One of author Frank Waters’s most popular novels, People of the Valley, is based on Mora,” per Wikipedia. Very interesting and two things I didn’t know.

What I did know about Mora is that its main street, Highway 518, shows evidence of a much more bustling town in the past.

And this: Kristy’s Korner Kafe. This sweet little place that I stop by to visit each time I cross over these mountains is a throw-back to the 1950s in the best possible ways. It is warm, friendly, casual, it offers good food and coffee and, I suspect, compassion when needed. What I’m trying to say is that it’s a human place also populated by dogs. This fellow, the official Mora Inn/Kristy’s greeter, was rescued a few years ago by the good people who own both…

… and this little guy who takes up parking lot duties…

… not to mention the busy goings on of the two chihuahua mixes on site. Suffice it to say, they were hard workers.

I too often feel, in the midst of our fast, modern culture (I’ve become my parents I swear), that I belong to a time of long ago and this warm place soothes me.

Anyway, I headed out on this trip in the first place, to the other side of the mountain, to find a little village called Rociada. I went looking for it because I’ve just finished reading a lovely book titled Behind the Mountains, by Oliver La Farge which was originally published in 1956.

It recounts stories of three women, primarily, who grew up there on the Baca Ranch in the 1920s.

All but three of the chapters were originally published in the New Yorker. It chronicles a way of life that simply doesn’t exist anymore and I wanted to go see the place I became so fond of while reading the book.

So I left Kristy’s, directions in hand, seeking NM 94. That was the right turn I’d be making out of Mora. I’ve included this photo, with my dirty windshield showing so brightly there on the right, because I wanted you to see… THAT’S NM 94 right there where the white car has come to a stop. THAT’S my turn onto a state highway! All I can say is, only in New Mexico, and I mean that in the fondest possible way.

Turning onto 94 almost instantly took me into another world.

Little did I know what was going to unfold as I drove high up the mountainside again…

… onto its east-facing shoulder and into another time…

… where the 21st century almost doesn’t exist. We’ve all heard the phrase, “the land that time forgot.” Well, this is it. I climbed and climbed…

… past abandoned houses and barns…

And, although I didn’t end up with any photos to show you because I was quickly lost in an emotional response to the place, I finally crested that upward rising slope of the mountainside and, spread before me, was the valley that La Farge described in his book, falling away in every direction. It took my breath away. It’s vast and is its own Eden tucked up there on that side of the Sangre de Cristos. I didn’t expect anything like it.

Rociada is actually two villages, Lower Rociada, and Upper Rociada, and the Baca Ranch sat somewhere in between. I came first to the lower, which was partly abandoned…

… and partly lived in.

In most of these old villages, the churches are well kept.

And then I reached Upper Rociada, the village most written about in La Farge’s book.

I thought of the quiet but bustling town he’d described in the 1920s, a place he brought vividly to life with his pros…

… and standing in the middle of that silent street, in the midst of all those abandoned buildings–yes, there was the mercantile and a few of the houses he’d written about–it was so very quiet but not mute.

I could imagine Consuela Baca, age 10, riding her horse right past me, dust rising from the dirt road. It was almost as if I was perceiving the silent footprints of a world now gone forever.

She was a ghost, that girl I’d come to know.

And I was overcome with waves of feelings, my mind suspended. I really could hear the sounds of farm animals and the laughter of children playing, in the air all around me. Rociada’s streets left still to the eye, were not to the heart. The spirit of the place lives on still.

And it occurred to me that, while I said this is a place that time forgot, we’ve forgotten something also. As a society. We’ve forgotten how to farm, how to raise most of what we need to survive.

We’ve, most of us long ago, abandoned quiet nights by the fire reading to one another, a whole family engrossed; forgotten entirely about bonding so acutely that it’s fair to say we needed each other, really needed our families and friends, for survival–at lambing time, or to bring in the crops, just to be there, solid. Knowing.

I think many of us in today’s culture have forgotten how to give of our time, in ways we don’t see on our device screens. Quietly, privately, intimately, importantly.

Understandably the young people left these villages and went off to cities where they could get jobs and earn money, which they had to do. Our culture was changing from an agricultural one into that of finance. The balance was tipping and we would soon need money more than we needed the goods we raised.

They left the old homes and their parents and grandparents, who stayed behind to work the land. And when the elders got too old to work and started to die out, these old villages started to die along with them.

And something was lost, I think. That quiet slow pace of considered living. Of admitting we needed each other. And depending on one another for a lifetime.

I stand on these streets, once dirt wagon trails, and I hear the phantoms. All of them and that life gone now. Though a few have stayed on.

I was struggling with this post because it felt almost too sad. It’s like something has become extinct and writing about it won’t bring it back, so why write it? But then I met Aggie at a party in Truchas. She and her husband are working to raise the funds to make necessary repairs to the old church in the village, built in 1754 (a post about that to come).

And she said we need to talk and write about what’s been lost so we can acknowledge it as a loss and properly grieve it. Yes.

So that’s why I’m writing this post, but also as a reminder to all of us to take more care, to understand what is precious and to know that our actions have consequences.

This old, adobe silo is the only thing remaining of the Baca Ranch. The rest burned down in the 1960s.

Gratefully, not in these villages but in others, new young farmers are planting small crops for their own families and to take to market.

I live up here in the mountains, in part, because the world has become too fast for me.

We used to look each other in the eye, not into the screens of our devices. I, personally, wish we could get more of that back and, maybe, one by one, we will.

Love to you all,

Jeane

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[All photos in this post were done by my dear friends Kevin and Katie Hulett in 2009 and 2010. Find them here: http://khpstudio.com/].

I feel as though I’ve let out a breath—a breath I didn’t know I was holding. When had it started? When I was one, sixteen, thirty, sixty-four? I honestly don’t know, but it was deep and old, ancient perhaps. Mammalian?

And this breath, as it was released, became a sigh, a deep sigh of relief, of joy even.

Much like an old horse I’ve befriended out on the llano. He’s a battered old thing, skin and bones, who has finally found his way into the pasture of a family, one willing to share what little they have to get him full again–cut grasses and fresh alfalfa from their yard, hay when they can get it. And there is something to nibble on the ground as well, in his large new pasture that stretches all the way down to the canyon. Sweet grasses and clover, blooming alfalfa.

Today I gave him an apple. You would have thought it was his first ever, and maybe it was. He looked at me with amazement in his eyes and savored each quarter as I handed it over.

After his apple I offered him the slow touching we’ve come round to. Most days he puts his chin in my palm as I curl my fingers back around his fleshy parts there. And he lowers the weight of his head, slowly, into my hand. I let him do this as long as he wants and I’ve noticed him nodding in and out of sleep sometimes.

But today I watched as he tried to scratch an area just behind his ear on a stick that is part of his fence, so I reached up and scratched it for him. At first I was startled by the sound and looked briefly around at what might be causing it. But then I realized it was coming from him. It was the horse.

The noise started up in his head where I’d imagine a whinny might be formed and he sang out a high pitched note that slowly descended into his throat, a little guttural sounding, a little hoarse (pardon the pun), until it bypassed his nostrils, reached his lips, and came out as a long, lush sigh—a sigh from somewhere deep inside of him, one that he’s been holding for a very long time.

My sigh was like that. Just like that.

The best word I can come up with, for that breath I’ve been unknowingly holding, is “fear” and yet that doesn’t really touch its essence. It goes so much further than a word can. I feel it deep into the marrow of my bones, rooted and profound. And broad, extending beyond my personal ancestors, way back to the ones who painted in caves, those who dwelt on cliff edges, and crossed the ice flows.

This fear feels so old. Its birthing place nestled within the ancient history of man I’m  thinking. We all must carry it, some sort of constantly on-guard defense system that will make us ready when the inevitable strike comes.

But what if a strike isn’t inevitable? Might it be possible to uncoil a bit, to stretch out some and loosen the ties without unraveling entirely? Might it be time to soften toward life again?

I think it just may be.

 Love to you all,

Jeane

I have been wanting to talk to y’all (this fresh word compliments of some new friends, I like it so I’m using it) for a long time now. You have been on my mind and I’ve been trying to put my thoughts together in a post.

I was told when I was younger that I was not a manifestor. And I believed it because I really haven’t seemed to be. It appears I can wish and wish and wish but the wishes just never come true.

And yet one quiet day recently I stopped to consider the life I’ve built for myself and I realized that I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of right here on this mountainside in northern New Mexico. I’ve made a simple, quiet, peaceful, creative life, one in which I continue my personal search for meaning. That’s all I ever wanted.

I could do with a little more money, that’s true, but I have everything else. And the fact is I don’t think I ever dreamed of money, so there you go.

My life has been perfectly imagined into being, likely by the child I used to be, toddling on the beach with my Great-Grandma Casson, herself an artist—a painter and a songwriter. So I guess my wishes have come true, many of them. I just didn’t notice them when they did.

All except for my preference to be healthy and strong.

But the fact is I’m rounding a corner on this whole Postherpetic Neuralgia thing (see http://high-road-artist.com/14047/an-artful-life/stick/ and http://high-road-artist.com/14102/an-artful-life/grief-first/). I realize I’ve been hating it, fighting it, deadening it with toxic drugs, resisting it. But I’ve been counseled more recently to try to approach it in new ways, endeavoring to “be kinder to the suffering.” That seems to be helping.

And I’ve gone back to therapy to see if that can help me hear the message my body is sending. Because I used to believe and I think I may be beginning to believe again, that when something is wrong with our bodies, it’s the soul trying to speak to us.

But bottom line, and this is what I wanted to share with you, I’m taking my life back, pain or no pain, and I’M PAINTING AGAIN!

I want to encourage any of you dealing with what life throws at us to perhaps take a step back, breathe into the challenge and be “kinder to the suffering.”

Happy New Year!

Love to y’all,

Jeane

Note: I wanted to re-publish the piece I wrote about taking “The Walk” with William deBuys to celebrate his receiving the inaugural Jane Wing Petchesky Conservation Award from the New Mexico Land Conservancy. DeBuys, long a steward of the land, recently published the book, A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, Oxford University Press, made possible by the Guggenheim Fellowship he received in 2008.

Taking “The Walk” With William deBuys

“A species of hope resides in the possibility of seeing one thing, one phenomenon or essence, so clearly and fully that the light of its understanding illuminates the rest of a life.” So begins William deBuys’ beautiful book, The Walk. DeBuys had been taking this particular walk, on his land in El Valle, New Mexico, for twenty-seven years when he began writing the essay that would become the book. Recently I had the opportunity to walk with him, a privilege I am still mystified by, but grateful for nonetheless.

So we walked together, past the barren saddle:

… the peeled trees:

… the swimming hole, low due to the drought:

…and the ruins of the ancient mill that had been built around 1816:

And he told me how the idea for the book was born. The first notion occurred long ago, in the early 90s or late 80s. Clarissa Pinkola Estes had published her book, Women Who Run With the Wolves and, although he never read it, he noticed the title and thought, ironically, “But what about men who walk with dogs?” which made him begin thinking about this walk he takes. That was the first glimmer of the book right there.

Then, some years later, he heard Scott Russell Sanders give a “very fine” talk in Santa Fe about a long essay he’d written that, “… somehow covered a lot of ground. It was personal and yet not too personal. It probed metaphysical matters but was firmly anchored in the tangible. So I just had that in the back of my mind as something I’d like to do. And then at a certain point in my life, things got kind of rough, and I usually turn to writing as a way of processing what’s going on.” It was then he had the idea of writing about this walk he takes as a vehicle for his inner journey, but he wasn’t sure how to get started, how to get into it.

His answer came during a “rather remarkable” trip with friends to a ranch in southwestern New Mexico. He recalls sitting in the sun on the portal having coffee that first morning. “As I sat there with my mind somewhat disassembled, the first sentence of what would later be The Walk came to me, and it came all of a sudden, just like a little package, as though a bird had brought it and laid it on my lap. So I got up and got a pad of paper and a pen and wrote it down. And as soon as I wrote it down I could see how the next several pages needed to go.”

When he arrived home, to this land and cabin, he wrote those several pages and, having written those, he could begin to see how it was going to end. So he was “off and running” and he “kept on until that essay was done.” He sent it around to some friends. One of them, a former editor of his, noted that, like Dante at the beginning of his epic three-part poem, Divine Comedy, this was a man of middle age, lost in a dark wood. Dante came up with three parts (Hell, Purgatory and Heaven). It was suggested that deBuys should look for the other two parts. “So that’s what I did,” he says, “Gradually the other two essays took shape and I had a book.”

But the first two essays were written without thinking he was going to publish them. In fact it was the first sustained writing he had done without having a publication in mind. He was just writing “because it was good to write.” And perhaps that is one of the reasons this particular book ended up exploring the very personal journey of an intensely private man.

“I didn’t write about my inner feelings to get them off my chest,” he says, “I wrote about them in order to produce a narrative, the subject of which involved other things… What I’m trying to do in that book is write about the discovery of certain ideas or ways of looking at things that I arrived at with some considerable effort. And to tell the story of that discovery I have to share some of my own personal inner journey…”

He begins The Walk at his desk, in his adobe cabin, studying the wood grain of its surface, being transported to the forest where it once stood as a living tree. He gazes out the window above the desk, contemplating the New Mexico sky, which takes him to the blackness of that sky at night, its stars “… light beyond light beyond light…” He is making the point that, “Almost any object of contemplation can be the vehicle for… discovery.” And almost any stimulus, Proust’s madeleine, for instance, or the buzzing of a fly, “… may lead anywhere, including inward by way of faults, feelings, or details of personal history to take us on an inner journey of unlimited extent…. We can travel great distances on the back of a buzzing fly.”

When Bill and I set out to walk the track that inspired his book, we were joined by Wes, the one remaining border collie, from three generations of border collies, to explore this land with deBuys:

He writes, “Of my twenty-seven-year circuit up and down arroyos and back by the river and the field, the layering of repetition and memory has so twined my sense of the land with my sense of my own past that one leads to the other and back again without the least interruption….”

We return to the home field and pass through its gate, the gentle slope carrying us back to the cabin. “It’s very nice, isn’t it?” deBuys says, almost to himself. And, indeed it is.

The land speaks of generations of lives lived on it, of the births and deaths, of struggle and determination, success and defeat. But, mostly, it embodies hope. Here, in the depths of this dry season, in the midst of deep drought, the Rio de las Trampas still runs at the base of the arroyo. The ponderosa, pinon, juniper and cottonwood still stand. The hayfield has put up its mixture of grasses and I listen to the birds sing, as chipmunks argue with Wes.

William deBuys often returns to his desk to gaze out the window, pondering. And he writes. “The mountains rise not like a thing, but like the spirit behind things, or like spiritedness itself. They rise like meaning. They rise with purpose and clarity. They rise like a promise of understanding in an ambiguous and paradoxical world. They rise not like hope itself, but like the promise that something as grand as hope might exist. The mountains rise like meaning to the sky.”

And these peaks that have anchored me, and also caused my heart to soar, come clear. Because William deBuys has given voice to what I already knew, but had no words for. The mountains rise like meaning to the sky. A species of hope resides in that.

You can learn more about William deBuys at http://www.williamdebuys.com/

And here’s an interview I did with him: William deBuys Comes to the Truchas, NM Library.

See some other posts that quote or refer to William deBuys:

• The New Mexico Sky
• Art Inspires Art
• William DeBuys: Coyotes
• A Little Mountain History

Love to you all,
Jeane

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A reader presented me with an idea this morning. She asked if I would consider incorporating some of my paintings into the blog and talking about my process. The thought isn’t entirely new. I’ve touched on this a bit previously (see previous posts The Canyon Series, How to Begin Painting Again, Painting Continuing and the older but still dear to my heart Coming to New Mexico), but her question stirred something else inside me.

I took this with me, out on our morning’s walk, just ahead of a storm.

Was there more to tell?

I breathed in the icy air, drank in the stunning visuals of my day-to-day life, and remembered.

You see her question took me back to my beginnings here, and the profound, deep, affect Truchas, New Mexico has had on my painting. And I realized there is a story I would like to try to tell, about the inspiration that birthed a number of different series, whole new bodies of work–inspiration that, in fact, changed who I am as an artist.

But it will take more time than I have today because I AM TAKING THE DAY OFF to go see my friend, Barbara McCauley Cardona, present a reading of her screen play, Every Little Breeze, put on by the Truchas Library.

In the meantime, my Kelee (see previous post A Three Legged Man of the West) is dealing with almost no snow on the ground, and dear Finn (see previous post Rescue Dog, Finn, Needs Rescuing Again) is doing really well with his treatments (a number of you have been asking).

And as I look out my window, it has started to snow.

Love to you all,

Jeane

A reader wrote to me the other day with a simple request. She suggested that I incorporate some of my paintings into the blog sometimes, “… and talk about the inspiration, method, series etc.” She added, “I would love it. Especially, of course, of your horse abstracts. Just an idea in case you ever have writer’s block…”

And, oh my, what her idea has unleashed! I wrote about my initial thoughts in the previous post, Is There More to Tell?, in which I came to the conclusion that there is, indeed, a real story to tell–about where I was as an artist BEFORE I came to Truchas and AFTER Truchas. It is a story of fences and horses and grasses and how they changed me. In fact the place has had a profound affect on both my work and, of course, on me. I’ve often said this land is powerful, that I’m not being allowed to live on it passively, that it requires something of me. And it does.

Since coming here I have been stripped down to the barest of essentials, living “skinless” for a time, as I came to call it (see previous post How Do We Grow?). My old ways of being have been shattered and I’ve been asked to pick up the pieces, to put myself back together again in new ways (see previous post Puzzling Myself Back Together Again). That’s definitely an on-going work in progress to be sure. I have dwelt deep within my own interior (see previous post What Is Important in Life?), making friends there, and have been guided to stand still and listen, to see (see previous post What do Artists Know?). I feel quite certain none of this would have happened had I stayed in Utah (see previous post The Long Goodbye), although I do believe the move to Utah from Seattle was critical. In fact I’ve often thought I was opened by Utah so I could be healed in New Mexico. This land is actively helping me do that.

So I’ve been digging through all my old photo files looking for pictures to illustrate this story. And a remarkable thing has happened. For some time now, I’d say for at least a year and a half, probably more, I have been seriously doubting myself as a painter. I figure some of you out there can relate to that, right? In fact I’ve had a tendency to look back on a very successful abstract show I had in Utah as my kind of personal gold standard, one I was no longer able to achieve. In my mind’s eye that show was beautiful. The work shined. And I feared that, perhaps, my best work was behind me.

Since coming to New Mexico, color has steadily worked its way out of my paintings and, again, I was fearful. Was I getting lazy or had I forgotten how to use color? Despite what I’ve told myself about the light of New Mexico washing the color out of my work, about being inspired, instead, by all the contrast that light creates, in the dark times I have had doubts. I felt somehow WRONG about my increasingly black, white and gray paintings. I’ve watched jewel-tone paintings sell like crazy while mine, all too often, sat in the gallery. I’ve worried that my work wasn’t trendy. Why wasn’t my work PRETTY for God’s sake?

But as I looked back through the old files, finding photos I’d forgotten about entirely, this remarkable thing I mentioned above happened: I discovered that I no longer even LIKE most of the paintings from that successful Utah show. They, in fact, helped me see the merit in my current work. Offering a glimpse of my own journey, the one that has taken me from there to here, they seem to also be inspiring a hint of the future–those pieces that are not yet painted, but that I see more clearly now, having visited my past.

In the next unknown number of posts, because I believe my artist’s journey just might inform some of yours, I will tell you all the story of how my work went from this:

… to this:

And yes, dear Sue, I will tell you all about the Horse abstracts.

Love to you all,

Jeane

A reader wrote recently expressing an interest in both my paintings and my process (see previous post Is There More to Tell?). While her interest lay mainly in my New Mexico work, her query has made me realize I do have something of a story to tell, one that could have meaning to some of you as you pursue your own artist paths (see previous post Why Aren’t My Paintings PRETTY For God’s Sake?). And I came to understand there was no telling it without starting at the beginning.

So You Think Artists Are Lazy?

As most of you know, I didn’t paint for 26 years after college, where I was a painting and drawing major and a printmaking minor (see previous post High Road Artist: My Story Begins). What you may not know is that coming back to painting took a tremendous commitment and no small amount of effort. Not only did I have to leave my corporate life and prepare to earn a living in a way completely foreign to me, I also had to remember how to paint.

So I started the task of re-teaching myself. I practiced every night after work and all day on both weekend days. This meant there was no more time for TV (although I allowed myself to record my favorite shows to be watched on Friday nights, my one night off) and no time for dalliances such as the newspaper or magazine subscriptions; no socializing with friends. In fact I felt there was no time to waste. I painted every free minute. I see as I write this that I was still in my business head–just transferring all those regimens to an “art life,” but I didn’t really speak the language yet. I was still basing everything in discipline, not desire. I hadn’t yet set myself entirely free and wasn’t touching into my artist’s soul. But I had taken the first huge step. I’d given notice at my traditional job and was preparing to leave the security of a paycheck behind.

I don’t have digital records of the first paintings I did then, but this was my third or fourth, a portrait of my dear friend, Buffy.

Once I gave a year’s notice at my traditional job, I had only that year to set aside enough money to live on for the following year. That was my plan: to give myself a safety net of a year before I had to start earning a living from painting. I got very busy squirreling away money.

As I look at these early pieces I am drawn to their more painterly quality, something I was unable to maintain as time went by. My paintings became tighter and tighter no matter my desires. I believe this had something to do with my perceptions of pleasing others, born of the many and various comments and asides from family and friends, that affected my work quite powerfully. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t yet discovered my own eye, my own vision, my artist’s soul, as I said earlier, that made me particularly susceptible to others’ opinions.

This is my dog, Savannah…

… my friend, Sam…

… a self portrait…

… and this was my very first commissioned portrait, painted for a coworker while I was still doing my corporate job. In fact it was this commission that helped me begin to believe I might have a future as a working artist.

The first three years I “earned my living” (this stated very loosely) painting commissioned portraits. This is my childhood friend and blog reader, Joy Patterson…

… Miriam and her horse…

… and my good friend, Jane.

However, there came a time when I could no longer paint portraits simply because they were too nerve-wracking. I was always so certain they would be rejected that I was a nervous wreck by the time they were finished. In fact my friend, Joy, was with me when I delivered the below painting, along with its companion piece, to its new owner. She said I was visibly shaking while standing there presenting them. It didn’t help that their owner, the person who’d commissioned them, had been a very close, personal, friend of Andy Warhol’s and I was looking at several of his originals on the opposite wall.

There was simply no sustaining that, so I started painting genre pieces with no idea of how they might sell. It was just after beginning these that I applied for a show at a community gallery called ArtsWest in West Seattle. I only had one piece completed by their stated deadline so I submitted one slide with a resume. A few weeks later the gallery director called and asked where I was showing and why I had submitted only one painting. When I told her I was unrepresented, she asked if she could come see me in my studio. And THAT is how I received my first one-woman show.

This is the only digital record I have from that show. It’s a painting of my nephew, Dan, sitting in our family’s cabin on Vashon Island.

I have very few digital files of my older genre work, and no large files for this one, but it was always one of my favorites:

For those of you unfamiliar with the term “genre art,” here is how Wikipedia defines it: “Genre works, also called genre scenes or genre views, are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre works specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on.” I came to think of my paintings as historical portraits, using style of dress, types of activities and objects specific to our time, that might give a viewer a hundred years from now, should my paintings survive, an idea of what it was like to live during our contemporary times. Below are a few of these pieces.

I had started the journey of moving away from a more traditional business life, into that of a working artist, on my own. But just as I was leaving my corporate job, I met the man who would become my husband. Together we would decide to leave Seattle for a life in a small, rural, town in southern Utah, which had a dramatic affect on my work.

That next up on Wednesday…

Love to you all,

Jeane

This is the third in a series of posts taking you back through a history of my work, from its very realistic roots and on to my abstracts (see previous posts Why Aren’t My Paintings PRETTY For God’s Sake? and So You Think Artists Are Lazy?). I will endeavor to shed light on how the one led to the other.

Stripped Down and Broken Open: Giving Birth to Art

I have to believe the transformation was put into motion when I moved to Utah (see previous post Into the Wilderness).

I left my home in Seattle for a small town in the southern part of the state, with my newish husband who was also my best friend. I never would have made the move without him. Our union was solid and would last a lifetime, I was certain. But nine short months after the move, our marriage ended. There aren’t words enough to adequately describe my sense of loss. Perhaps that’s why, in some cultures, people keen over the bodies of their loved ones. I keened over the body of my marriage, because there were no words.

Bereft, I found myself suddenly and utterly alone in the desert–a very strange and foreign land to me, completely opposite from everything I had ever known in the Northwest (see previous post Of the Land). The air smelled different, like spices on my tongue. A thick fragrance of sage and cactus flowers, indigo and creosote bush mixed with the sweat on my skin.

Nights were hot and black, holding a depth beyond comprehension. There were no comforting house lights across the street because there were no houses, no neighbors.

And it was silent, so silent my ears ached with it.

The heat, at 110, 120, most days, was impossible to grasp. It radiated up from the red sand, burned down on me from a white hot sky. I was surrounded by it entirely. It melted my steering wheel. Seriously.

I didn’t even recognize the BUGS! There were scorpions, black widows and tarantulas among many, many others, not one of which was within my realm of experience. And let’s not forget the several different types of rattlesnakes and GILA MONSTERS.

The days hissed with the hot rustle of cicadas.

No, this was definitely not my home.

Stripped down, flayed and broken open, this is where I caught my first true glimpse of me. THIS is where the abstracts were born. But I wouldn’t fully understand it until this very moment as I write it out to you. They waited years to show themselves–until I came to New Mexico, where the mountain scooped me up and held me in her deep, cool, embrace.

Absolutely none of this was welcome and none of it was accidental. I was exactly where I needed to be to do the work I was meant to do. I just didn’t know it yet.

I continued to paint genre pieces for awhile after my arrival in Utah, although I didn’t find as many people out and about–likely due to the heat, you think?

This was my very first Utah painting. The bright light and heat are evident, but I was still working in the cool colors of the Northwest:

Somewhere along the way my pallet changed to reflect the warm desert light, as opposed to the blue light of the Northwest.

I had my own teaching studio in Utah which was part of the Coyote Gulch Art Village. This scene took place very near my Blue Raven Studio:

This is a painting of my Buddhist teacher who helped me through the difficult transitions, two fellow students, and the iconoclastic cowboy who was my boss and owner of the horse tour business I’d become a part of. We were all standing on the rim of Three Mile Canyon, walking distance from my home:

This was, literally, my back yard:

My subject matter shifted when I felt the desire to celebrate and document the women and girls who touched my life and helped to give it meaning.

This is Ginny, my very first painting student on our very first day of class…

… and Aubrie who became like a daughter to me…

… Paige, a woman who believed in my work early on and commissioned several portraits, as did her sisters…

… and this is a self portrait with my dear apricot angel, Little Girl, moving in front of the camera as I took the shot…

In the midst of painting this show I went a little color-freaky. I amplified everything and started to loosen up in other ways as well. It may have been a reflection of my healing, but the color poured out of me. And I began playing with abstracted forms. In fact this is when the very first hints of abstraction were introduced to my work.

The truth is, I was working with a couple of abstract painters in my classes and I was intrigued. As I helped them hone their skills, I began to investigate mine.

This is Kayla, a girl who lived near me. She became profoundly significant in my life and was a flame point of great personal growth…

… here’s Lynn taking a break from one of my painting classes…

… and Valerianne playing her flute in the canyon for a cloud of golden dragonflies…

… Karen in an ancient village near my home…

… and Brenda, whose bright smile and bright eyes always inspired me…

Thus began a two year period of work that resulted in a show called, Changing the Way We See, at the Sears Art Museum Gallery at Dixie State University. Here is a quote from my show concept: “These women and girls, the paintings you will see here, are my healers, my lessons, my road map, my inspiration, my guides. Through the salve of their souls, I find myself. May this show offer you, as well, a new way to see.”

On Friday I’ll show you examples of my work shifting fairly dramatically to abstracted forms while still holding onto the figure. These will be the last paintings before my first trip to Truchas and my first abstract show.

See you Friday.

Love to you all,

Jeane

This is the fourth in a series of posts taking you back through a history of my work, from its very realistic roots and on to my abstracts (see previous posts Why Aren’t My Paintings PRETTY For God’s Sake , So You Think Artists Are Lazy? and Stripped Down and Broken Open: Giving Birth to Art).

Of Transitions and the Place Between

Having painted relentlessly for two solid years of my life, creating the show Changing the Way We See, I took some time off to teach solely and make friends with the desert. Some new acquaintances, jewelers, knew it inside and out and took me, over the period of a summer, to old pioneer dump sites where we found the broken remains of very old plates, glassware, pottery, bottles… They also took me to a crystal mine, and to two separate mountains of jasper, as well as a truly special place where  blue topaz crystals seemed to grow right out of the desert’s red sand. Oh my, the little girl rock hound in me was in heaven. Time would stand still when climbing down a steep slope, buckets laden with gorgeous stone I never could have imagined finding when I was a child. In fact I was living my young girl’s dream come true.

It makes sense that these treasures would find their way into my work once I started painting again. This is the first found object glass piece I did, using mastic to adhere the broken bits of plates and pottery to the canvas, leaving the figures flat. I hadn’t, yet, started to include stone.

In this second piece, I added large pieces of selenite crystal along with the old plates and glass, again leaving the figure flat, finishing it with paint. I’d found the crystal in the desert. Can you imagine coming upon this stunningly bright stone sticking up out of the red sand, catching the light? It was an experience I’ll never forget, like finding hunks of crystal left by whimsical fairies, planted there for the sheer delight and beauty of it.

And, of course, the next logical step was to plaster the figure, giving it dimension.

This was my final and, I think, most successful found object piece. You can’t see it very well in the photograph, but I used a lot of gem quality jasper in it. In fact I had a rock hammer made by a local blacksmith, a very old guy, and split the larger hunks of stone in my back yard, wearing my prescription snorkel mask to protect my eyes. I was quite a sight!

At the same time I began experimenting with abstracted shapes and thicker paint. My pallet started to tone down as well, adding some neutral creams to the brighter pallet I’d been using. I see this as a reflection of my own interior “cooling down.” So much of the emotional work I’d been doing was settling in to me. The fire of intense loss I’d experienced was dying down to banked embers. I’d found my way to acceptance, forgiveness and unconditional love and my work was the physical evidence of that.

I remember painting this piece. It was such a leap to transform what was my kitchen into these shapes and colors. I particularly love the lines of yellow forming a rectangle in the upper center of the piece. I titled this The Good Birthday.

I think you can tell how new this all was to me–what an experiment I’d embarked on. It was rather scary leaving the style and process of painting I knew so well behind–a style I was known for I might add. But, just as I seemed to be leaving the “known me” behind, my work had to follow. It was definitely a fiercely transitional time–a time of new work/new life being born that wasn’t completely evident yet. Although still very self-conscious, the abstract artist in me was awaking.

I always felt this was the most successful piece from this short series. I called it The Blue Door.

And, after that, the two new concepts merged. I added the plaster from the found object pieces into my paintings and the process I’m still using today, albeit it differently, was born.

I had embarked on a time of profound discovery and closure that I never would have chosen if given the choice, so I wasn’t given one. A birthing that necessitated pain, as all birth does, was taking place and I was in it. I was coming into ME. And my paintings reflected all of it–the growth, the pain and the confusion.

I’d come to truly love the small, rural, town I’d moved to, the one so unfamiliar when I first arrived. I loved it for its red dirt roads, homesteader fences, and horses in vast pastures, the fields that were planted in hay and harvested four times a year–and for its wealth of “raw”ancient sites. This is what I called the many sites my dog and I would traverse day after day, week after week–meaning they weren’t excavated or charted by archeologists. No park system was limiting their access. There were simply too many sites in Utah for these to be bothered with. So I explored them with utter abandon and deep delight.

But the town was changing. Much of what I loved about the place was disappearing–the red dirt roads and the homesteader fences, certainly the livestock. And although I’d done a lot of healing and letting go, there were finally too many “ghosts” lingering there. I knew it was time to go.

So I started looking for a home to buy beyond the canyon, up on the mountain. But when a friend learned I’d never been to New Mexico and I thought Santa Fe was a western art town, she recommended a road trip before I made any decisions about a move. She’d been to Truchas six years before, so we booked a casita at a B&B in the village.

This is the painting I was working on when we left. I’d filled in the entire abstracted background, which was so much fun, but had left all the figures blank, to be painted on my return.

As I drove, I day dreamed about that piece. The truth was that I dreaded the meticulous figurative work I’d have to do to complete it–and right there in the car, on my way to Truchas, New Mexico for the first time, I had something of an epiphany: what if I made paintings WITHOUT figures?

In Monday’s post I’ll tell you about that life-changing visit and show you the first Truchas inspired works…

Love to you all,

Jeane