Mountain modern style, cabin art and bear art, both contemporary and traditional artistry define the artist roster at Gallery 5830', Truckee, California. I'm especially grateful that many of my original paintings from my Natural World art series are exhibited at Gallery 5830'. During the COVID-19 crisis, the gallery offers gift cards and shipping for collectors. 

I saw the quote, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood," Tom Robbins. My childhood had been a slog and I grieved not having a preponderance of happy memories. I wasn't willing to gaslight myself and "forget" my childhood, but I was willing to mine it like a forensic anthropologist, sifting through every last piece of the past, looking for the pieces that linked into a form that gave me joy. I searched for every last piece of good memories. To do that, I came up with a plan -- I would shift my meditation practice a few times per week towards my goal of living a happy childhood (at last) and I would journal and repeat affirmations. This was pre-internet, so I was informed by every psycho-spiritual book I could find at the local Deschutes County Library. 

A couple years into that practice, I married and had a baby. Now more than ever, I intuited that I must sustain my practice of happiness, so that I would be a loving and effective parent. Though I had no articulated idea to create art that mirrored my practice, that is exactly what happened. In 1995, I had an epiphany and began what would become my Paint Happy series. The following introduction to the book I wrote 6 years later, describes my perception of the process.  

A melody played on the piano is recognizable but different on a violin or flute. Each instrument gives the artist a different form with which to express that melody. In the same way, visual artistic "styles" are like different instruments. The style that I choose to paint in is suited to what I want to say through the image I create. Which is why you see a few different visual styles on my site. What you are not seeing are styles I ventured into that never grew legs. Growing legs is what I call a direction that deepens and widens as I work, causing a cascade of images to flow towards me. 

Painting for a paycheck as a outdoor advertising billboard artist during the 1980's taught me to paint fluidly, fast and to be elegantly precise in the relaxed way that only completing miles of painting can engender. Only twenty years ago, a young artist could find paid employment painting pictures. Fresh out of art school or with a good portfolio an artist could find a job that increased their skills at the same time they made a living. Sign painting shops, billboard companies and printing shops used hands-on techniques and tools to make their products. That reality is now a thing of the past in all of those businesses.

Painting from my family photo album inspires my images of Native Americans. About two to five times per year, my father put on his eagle feather headdress, suede loincloth, ankle bracelets of bells and feathers, then prepared to dance. Before he fastened his headdress, he carefully positioned a small medicine bag on a string hanging from his neck and double tied the moccasins he had made and beaded himself. Everything he wore he had made himself. 

Sometimes, when I'm beginning a  new painting, I wonder what I'm going to paint. I may have an idea, but mostly, I think of something that caught my interest and wait for images to appear. Usually, ideas for images feel as though they come through me rather than from me.

Horses are more than a ride, they take us to our dreams and teach us to journey. I was never a horse girl. You know the type -- completely obsessed with everything horse. But I was a child who lived in my imagination between the pages of my favorite encyclopedia or the latest book from my ever-present stack checked out from the library. And horses were in every culture that caught my vision. 

I came in contact with Amy Remensnyder when she researching her La Conquistadora book. She had found my ex-voto retablo titled, La Conquistadora / Dine Spider 
Woman / Puebloan Corn Maiden. Amy interviewed me regarding my inspiration and intent creating the image. Her passion for the subject of the Virgin Mary as La Conquistadora supported by scholarly discipline and historical clarity makes Amy G. Remensnyder's new book, La Conquistadora - The Virgin Mary at War and Peace in the Old and New Worlds, the current masterpiece and go-to book on the subject of La Conquistadora, New Mexico's patroness and the oldest Marian figure in the United States.