In the Pursuit of Healing

In times gone by, the idea of alchemical processes was somewhat of a sacred pursuit, a desire to transform lead into gold, the medieval forerunner of chemistry concerned with the transmutation of matter.  Was it a fairytale?  Was it a metaphor for spiritual pursuits? As a painter, I have been inspired by a desire to make images that transport the viewer into stillness through the process of mixing and applying oil-based substances; a pursuit with a long historical tradition of alchemical processes. 

My studio, like many other artist's spaces, is a clutter of bottles, mediums, cans of paint, jars and tubes of pigments, brushes, palette knives, powders, glitter and glues. Rolls of canvas, finished pieces, pieces in process line the perimeter of the space. There are two large chunks of beeswax that I use to make encaustic mediums in the drawer of an old armoire, baskets of tools and boxes of outdated slides are stacked on top.  All the material stuff that gets mixed and melted, stirred and spread around on surfaces-- in the hope of making something meaningful-- unfortunately sometimes has its own toxicity. 

When I was in graduate school, I read a book by Suzi Gablik, The Reenchantment of Art.  It stopped me in my new found tracks. Gablick deconstructed the art of making things as part of the problem. I couldn’t imagine what to do for awhile because my lifelong goal of painting was clearly a toxic pursuit. Almost all the mediums for painting have harmful substances contained within them.  Photographers work with noxious chemicals in the dark room or they did, pre-digital.  Painting has its own hazards. All manner of substances in each department of art have pernicious qualities. One couple, mentioned in Gablik’s book, quit working in photography all together. Another woman I have met in New Mexico made her practice cleaning up litter daily, for ten years she would get up and go collect garbage in Santa Fe and that became her art form.

I struggled for awhile with all of this and still do to some extent. 

Ms. Gablik came to speak at UNM thirty years ago after her book was published in 1991.  She said then that she didn’t know whether it was right to fly to give her talk in New Mexico.  She was thinking about the destruction that we were doing to the atmosphere ahead of others, but we still have not changed course. Now we find ourselves in the place of no return, Arctic ice melting and with climate disruption, pandemics may become more and more common. 

Yet, I decided then, as now, that painting has a place in the world.  And I wouldn’t wish, for instance, that Leonardo da Vinci had not painted his masterpiece, Salvator Mundi, Christ the Savior of the World or any other of his paintings that are now hanging in museums. But what of the unhealthy ingredients that make up the materials an artist uses currently?  What of the damaging effects chemicals have on the climate?

My first public outing after the year of quarantine was to see a Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum, from the collection of Jacques and Natasha Gelman. The show underlines Mexican Modernism of her time and includes paintings of her husband, Diego Rivera. Her work always gets to me in a way that is about the intrinsic powerful nature of her spirit.  It’s personal but it speaks to everyone. She was resilient in her life, a lifetime of tremendous hardship, full with pain and suffering do to a terrible accident, subsequent surgeries, loosing a pregnancy and ultimately a leg. One can barely imagine how she had the fortitude to keep painting.  Yet, her oeuvre would not exist, at least as we know it, had it not been for the profound experience of her suffering.  

I believe in the power of art to be healing. Academics have put that down in the past and certainly, I have felt I had to keep that belief to myself. But there is shift currently and especially through the voices of indigenous faculty, I have noticed a return to knowing art making as a sacred pursuit; there is power in the making and a secondary power in viewing that is undeniable.

Many artists love the materiality of their mediums, the colors, yes, and especially the plasticity of it.  That’s where the term ‘plastic’ derives from, in the sense of being easily shaped or molded.  The process of turning compounds into images of landscapes we feel we can step into, portraits we imagine we can reach out and touch, forms of pain or grace, heaven or hell, abstractions that transport us to another reality is often the driving force. Painters lose their ego selves when working intently on something outside of themselves; time sometimes gloriously ceases while we work.  Somedays, unexpectedly, when I am particularly immersed in the process, I might find myself in a meditative space. Fleeting, yes, but one reason the alchemical nature of the act of painting is so compelling to the artist. 

Kahlo had some of these moments when she was painting, moments where she was elevated beyond her human condition, of that I am certain.  Her work continues to touch us in the way that the alchemical processes of painting can - visually her images hit our hearts, fill us with compassion, yearning and the aspects of human suffering we can all identify with, a sacred pursuit.