I find that in my formation of an idea, I begin to pull together tints of past knowledge and structures. Things that are covered under the tower of thoughts in my memory start to rumble, vibrate, loosening the weight and beckoning for my consideration. While at first the connections are not apparent, a consideration happens, and colors, such as they are, create form.

I’m reverting so many times to the ways that we are connected to the Earth and its rhythms. While the paved lanes, painted lines, and structured buildings give us an easier passage, nature continues to dictate the path. I would have it no other way.

So, in reference to this acceptance that we are, indeed, subject to the weather, seasons, tides, and land changes, I’m basing my 2019 idea on the cycles of the moon. The light from the moon seems to have risen in assorted times in my own reference. When I was 13 and delivering newspapers with my mother at 5:00 am, I was so grateful for the mornings of light, when the moon augmented the street lights and lent clarity and safety to the darkness. Working in the high altitudes in Colorado, we’d take the horses out for full moon rides, galloping through the forest and careening around two-track corners, laughing and screaming and wrapping our arms around our horses.  Backpacking trips, when the moon shone through the tent fabric, staying away sleep and calling to us to come out, stand in the light to see all of the boulders and white bark pines in their varying shadows. Even at home, now, heading out to feed the horses before bed, turning off the headlamp to fully absorb the brightness where once it was dark, the moon provides guidance.

From what I have found so far, and from what I can project, we will have 12 full moons appearing this year in the northern hemisphere.  And so, I will have 12 paintings of horses that I will have photographed, painted, and put together as a complete show at the end of 2019. I typically paint the horses I know, the ones I interact with. But, I’d like to change it up a bit. Here’s how it will work:

I am putting a call out via Facebook and Instagram to horse owners and friends of horse owners, or even people that know a special horse, as each moon ends its cycle. On the time and date of the new moon, I will start accepting and reviewing photos of people’s horses, looking for that certain horse that seems to hold the spirit of the time. Once I have chosen said horse, I will need to come out and take my own photographs. I find that this is the best way to gather the individuality of each animal. The process of creating the painting has thus been set in motion, and I’ll work on it through the moon. Starting at the next new moon, the cycle will start again. At this point, I will need to limit the distance within a reasonable driving distance of Huntley, MT...unless you want to fly me out to your horse. ;) And so it will continue through the last full moon, the December Cold Moon.

It’s a bit of a journey, this new task. I don’t yet know which will come. I do know that I can start. And so, here it is. Starting Saturday, January 5, 2019 at 6:29 p.m., I am asking people to submit photos of their horse to be chosen to be painted. This moon is known in some cultures at the “Wolf Moon”, the moon when the presence of the wolf was known through the challenges of winter and the breeding season. I will, indeed, write more about this specific moon so you can decide if your horse fits this moon. 

My goal in this endeavor is both personal and social. I’d like to bring in the outer world to my own personal experience of art. The interactions of bringing of experience and emotions make art. This is but one way to do so. So, January 5, 6:29 p.m. MST, I’ll be ready. 

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They're a convergence of stories, these pieces. Shall it be told in chronological order, a linear event-driven succession of causal nature? Or perhaps ordered in thoughts, ideas. An outline signifying each notion, carefully and methodically dissecting each as such. Except, as much as the straight trajectory appeals, it doesn't lend itself to the all. Hidden in the events is a past that makes today possible.

The Elm, English, perhaps?

My Husband is, among the widest variety of handy a person can imagine, a luthier, crafting stringed instruments from wood with a story. He's often called to old buildings to salvage stairs and pews and pianos, or people will drop off random sections of trees, benches, anything with the possibility to become. Shortly after we were married, his friends called with a rather large stump that remained in their backyard. Armed with an "at-times" operational chainsaw, the Highlander (I'm not quite sure that Toyota was envisioning all of the uses that "Helga" has helped with when designing this vehicle), and the dogs, off we went to the Billings neighborhood. Much cutting, wedging, rolling, and leveraging ensued. Two cylindrical mammoths were *soon* loaded onto Helga, and my portion sat amongst the pups in the rig. The sheer mass of this tree was overwhelming.

Time passed, they rested in our yard, elevated from the ground in which they once grew.

A year later we hefted these fellows to our new home, but this time in a more suitable horse trailer, with less anxious glances in the rearview mirrors.

And still they rested, cured, changed.

The Evolution of Process

​As an artist, I'm seeking a level of truth, of definition. I refer myself to biological connections, to the things I see around me. Walking my dogs, working with my horses, driving through the depths of snow to check water and feed, these events inform my process of coinciding within the textures of nature. While my paintings have evolved from a merging of my own ideas and the painting itself, the effects of the paint and water and graphite and subject, I was often the primary influencer. I created some level of rift, and it was then my work to develop within that.

I sought, in some way, to bring in the variety of surfaces, line, and chance that life outside me could provide. I wanted less of my own influence and more of a structure outside of myself.

My trunk portion remained, a record of the seasons past, of the mild and the frigid winters, the tremendous growth periods and the minimal ones, of the sun and the soil and the rain.

Enter the timeliness of Canon I

​I like figuring. Working within an idea. Creating some resolutions to a problem posed. 

The criteria of the show: Create 4 pieces of a 12" x 12" format to be viewed as a collection but exist on their own standing.

​Canon III, 1.618

I tasked myself with a way to consider this as a collection that told a story as a whole, but then could present each piece as an individual. I wanted each tile to be inexorably linked with one another, dependent as it once was as a column in which to grow. I used the framework of the masters, of the Golden Ratio and the dissection of such. My understanding of the relationships found in this ratio and the removal of the square to create another golden rectangle coincided with the square aspects of the project. 

I lost myself for a happy time in the equations and the relationships therein. I treated each 11 x 11 square (I determined that the Elm wood be the guiding force, and the redwood as the framework in which it rested, in my own "Ren" interpretation) as the square removed, and extended the rectangle into the adjacent square. Using the lines to identify places of prominence and tie-ins with the other squares, I added the structure of mathematical rule into the rings of the growth.

I savored the expectations of a definite and controlled outcome.

Ren

The physicality of this name is immersed in this horse. His is a story of trust, goodwill, and courage. He brings to life the ideas of the work, a reason that all of the rules and figuring are worthwhile. His representations are valid to him, his expressions are his own, yet he signifies a universality that stretches across the horse portrayal into the human realm. 

Choosing his expressions for each tile was done with care and consideration. Again, each piece is determined to stand on its own but is intrinsically connected with the other. Communication, both in horses and humans, can be weighted with positioning, social standing, and body language. The subtleties belie the importance.

Growth

The level of chance, unpredictability, weak points structured from years past; they constantly affected the Elm as I worked. I found that different areas reacted to the washes of paint with an assortment of character. Some portions held the moisture on the surface, content to let it pool and solidify. Others immediately soaked it into the grain, requiring layers and layers to achieve an effect. 

Each tile reacted as a whole to the paint. The first tile that I started, Circumspect, was content to let me use a brush and blend the colors. It fit.

Until I started Hearken.

I have found that I cannot often push a painting past its existence. While I can urge it along, it seems to be on its timeline and formation of ideas. Hearken immediately reminded me of this. My attempts at a similar process to Circumspect failed. Finally, in some level of experimentation and giving myself over to the ideas of the wood, I grabbed my palette knife and created washes of color. Pressing, scraping, applying, thinning and thickening the wash, this is where the wood lay. It began to take on its own contributions. Throughout the next three tiles, I revisited Circumspect, applying what I had learned to it. 

I treated the Golden Ratio lines as a delineation, a break in color and thickness. I wanted them to carry themselves throughout the painting without breaking it apart. Those rules and measurements needed to present themselves just as validly as the rings.

And then, the very issue of end grain wood brought about some of my greatest realizations in respect to life. The rings signify the growth, the years. Extrapolating this, they could represent learning and stages.

Pressures contracted and expanded the tiles. What I once considered as stalwart became flexible and brittle. While the corners, the intersections of the stories, remained as they once were, the very insides of the tiles were continuing to change.
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And this is where they cracked.

And this is where we crack.

In our growth.

In taking chances.

In leaping into the unknown.

In this attempt to tell their story, I am both satisfied in what I have presented and left feeling as if I can not possibly capture it all. So much of it is outside of me, that I cannot but hope that you bring yourself into them. 

Ah, how time ticks on in the singular nature, appearing to always move forward with the loss of the past. The past is with us, though, present in the growth and thoughts we have, our movements fueled by the happenings. The season is changing, and the fruit of the summer rests in the cooling of the fall.

I am sitting in presence of the past; the magpies picking amongst the soil, searching for tidbits from the warmer season, the garden eking out the shortened days and the declining warmth, and the horses browsing for the remaining nutritious grasses and leaves on the overburdened land. That transfer and continuation of energy lives on in the present, and thus informs the future.

The studio is filled with paintings I began this summer, with even a few from last winter, anxiously awaiting my return from the sun-filled days. And so, as these days shorten and the sun appears and disappears more to the south, I will begin my changing of routines, from the abundance of the outside season to the fall cultivation of summer activities and thoughts.

I'm sitting in UnCorked, a wine and cheese bar, in Livingston, MT as my Husband, Wes Urbaniak, plays music for the evening. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have a block of time to update my website while I listen to my favorite musician and sip a delightful malbec/cabernet blend. I'm thinking about the various stories and talents that we all carry with us, and the intersection of those moments as we converge in the same realm of time.

I've been immersing myself in a variety of podcasts lately as I complete my daily drive to take care of my newest horse, Ren. I am a fledgling in understanding the principles of physics and time and reality, but these thoughts have been heavily in my mind as of late. Coupled with that is the investigation into geology and the formation, be it the rising or settling, of the land.  I recently donated a painting to the Christikon Benefit Auction in order to raise money for their ministry of the Lutheran faith.

The Christikon Camp is located along the Boulder River, a place that I passed on the way to a trailhead many summers ago for an extended backpacking trip with my sister. Many days of hiking through the forests and over the Columbine Pass to a variety of high alpine lakes eventually led to the extensive switchbacks of the Upsidedown Trail. Coupled with my memory of my own experience of the days spent exploring was the large expansion of time that these mountains in which these mountains have been formed. And then, one day as I was sitting at home last summer, Mark Donald, the director of the Christikon Camp, sent me a text showing four lost horses that had found their way to the camp's grassy meadow. As I worked through my vision for this work, I relied heavily on these experiences set in a variety of time:

         "One can go back to a place, but one cannot go back to a time. Yet, each place is a culmination of such time, and all is in constant flux.
           Research of the geologic forces of the northern Absaroka Mountain Range between the Boulder River and Yellowstone River Drainages fielded such ideas as crustal warping, uplift, and erosion. Further delving into the formation led me to the merging of glacial carving, immense floods and lifting land to form what we now consider the Absaroka Beartooths. The understanding is as vast as the high alpine lands, and I hold but a small glimpse into it.
            Upon this immense span of time lie the intersections of the present. A 2008 backcountry trip, a wayward journey of 3 horses and 1 mule to the Christikon meadow in 2016, and the creation of this piece in the spring of 2017 center on the layers of the land. Time melds to a place of now."

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As I'm studying and recording marks as I draw this evening, I am listening to the conversation of the physicist Carlo Rovelli and Krista Tippett. I am holding the beginnings of thoughts about the concept of existence and reality...we and others exist within the interactions of the surroundings. I link this so strongly as I draw lines that intersect, darken, lighten, widen, all to create the impression of a specific shape. We are that which we come up against, defined by our outer boundaries. But what is happening from the relational subjective perception on the inside?

I tie this back into a thought I had while walking the other evening. That which we touch is only felt by the resistance of it. I attempted to feel of the finest fibers of a winter grass, but I couldn't quite grasp the texture as it bent beneath my finger. Rovelli poses such a compelling idea: "I don't think that I as a person exist without the rest. I am my friends, my love, my enemies, my everything that I interact with. " He goes on to discuss the relational aspect of our lives and, from my point of listening, the influences of the environment.  I work so heavily in finding the curves and connections of shape and life in my work.
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Amidst the rays of the Montana July sun, my husband and I first traveled to Ennis for a music gig at the Gravel Bar, and then made our way to a spot just north of Bozeman. Purpose lie in photographing horses for commissioned pieces, and as we meandered along the dirt roads, thoughts of time and influence lie heavy in my mind. The abstract questions of the geological lifting of the Bridger Range and the relationship to the plains lend themselves to a deepening exploration of existence in time. The bedrock upon which we exist and the underlying structures merge with the ideas of growth and decay, impermanence of form within the seasons, and transformation of energy. The reaching, curing grasses along the dusty road rely on the nutrients of those before them, as they, too, will become nourishment for tomorrow. Engaging with the very present and aware horses as they interact with us and each other supplies a level of immediacy. As much as we are defined and determined by the influences of the before, we live in the exacting time of now. In translation of these ever-forming understandings, my piece titled "Emergence; Revenant Castilleja" works within the layers of structure, place, and life. The dichotomy of our place continues with this painting. At first conceived beneath the period of growth, photosynthesis, and abundance, and then worked on under the cover of snows and dormancy, I worked amongst the interplay of the influence of land and life. Life, held within the ever graceful and dynamic horse called Raven emerges amongst the landscape. The semi-parasitic Indian paintbrush (Castilleja) exists using the roots of others, here, the Arnica. This continuation of reliance threads itself into continuity; mountain sediments flowing to the plains, Indian paintbrush gaining sustenance from others, horses shaped by their environment.

I am thrilled to have this painting in the 29th Annual Women's Works Show. Reminiscent of the fissures cut by water through the landscape and echoing the colors of the area's native sandstone, this piece serves to investigate the intangible demands of sorrow. I've found that as I am developing a work, it begins to have specific characteristics.  My task then is to integrate those characteristics and underlying thoughts in order to convey them accurately and aesthetically.  With this specific painting, I found an elusiveness in the lines that I wanted to maintain, as well as an intense level of realism and emotion around her eyes and the way she holds her ears. 

It is currently displayed at the Old Court House Arts Center in Woodstock, IL from March 10 through April 30, 2016.  The annual exhibit is the Northwest Area Arts Council's international juried competition. More information and the catalog can be found at http://www.womensworks.org/ .

The eclipse of the Harvest Moon in September of 2015 was a striking event as the earth's shadow gradually infused the moon with a hue of red. I wanted to portray the horse as pushing through this unavoidable event that is shrouded in mystery.  Research regarding various myths about the Blood Moon indicate a level of destruction or, interestingly enough, growth.  

My latest piece is explores the concept of amending while building on flaws.  I first created this painting by intentionally and irregularly dripping tinted medium on a color-washed canvas. The horse was then enmeshed with the marring lines.  The duality of paint application and texture expressed within the painting speaks to the nature of self and the environment.  I am working with the idea of the various layers of ourselves. This painting became a search to regain the beauty and balance upset by the initial rift.  His gaze seems to implore the viewer to face...something.  He calls to engage with him.

Part of my quest, or development, as an artist is sharing my work and ideas.  For without that, I have pondered my purpose.  What is this drive to create that which has been unseen before? 

Georgia O'Keeffe said, "Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing--and keeping the unknown always beyond you." The portion of her words that ring with resounding clarity is the idea that sharing that piece of myself, yourself, ourselves, is the primary focus.  

Eva Hesse, an influential sculptor working in the 1960s in New York, said, "I am interested in solving an unknown factor of art and an unknown factor of life." I can appreciate her insight as I work through my pieces.  There is a juxtaposition that I cannot quite grasp between myself, my subject, the material, and that unknown essence.  Each painting is a reach to come to the full understanding of a concept.