The Queen Issue (v. 17)

HOW DID YOU GET INTO PAINTING
AND PHOTOGRAPHY?
Growing up in Santa Fe art was always part of our life as
a family. My mother was a weaver and my father owned
an art gallery. My grandmother was a sculptor and my
grandfather was a photographer. But I never thought of it
as something I wanted to do until after college.
I started painting eleven years ago. For many years
my paintings and drawings were a secret practice that
I showed to almost no one. While in graduate school
I got a job working for artist Titus Kaphar as a studio
and research assistant. Titus cast a vision for me for
what it meant to be a working artist. He gave me critiques
on my paintings and answered questions I had
about techniques, materials, and color. Titus taught
me to listen to my work. In graduate school I took studio
classes in painting and drawing, and in one class
the professor assigned a hundred paintings a week. In
those classes and in the critiques with Titus my painting
moved from being something private to out in the
open. At some point during those years I realized I
wanted to be a painter.
Photography was more of an experiment that eventually
became a medium. My grandfather was a landscape
and architectural photographer. When my brother
and I were little he used to take us on trips to Point Lobos
in Big Sur. We’d shoot with disposable cameras while
he worked with a large format 8 x 10” camera that he
would haul out into the landscape. Watching him take
photographs as a child still haunts me, especially when
I’m lugging my camera and easel out into a sand dune to
take a photograph or paint. In middle school I learned
how to shoot film on one of my grandfather’s cameras
and develop photographs in a dark room. But I didn’t
really view photography as a medium I wanted to work
in until I took a road trip through the Four Corners region
in 2014, and started shooting abstract landscapes.
Taking photographs helped me to see something I had
been blind to growing up.
HOW DO YOU JUGGLE BEING A MOM
& WORKING AS AN ARTIST?
It is difficult! But I wouldn’t have it any other way. Logistically
it is a puzzle. Some weeks I don’t get much done
in the studio and spend all my time with Wyeth. His baby
years are flying by, and I love and treasure my time with
him. Other months I’m in the middle of a big project
and need to work full time and really give myself to the
painting. On a good day my life as a mother offers a refuge
from my life as a painter, and vice versa. I value my
time in the studio more now than when I was working
in there every day 9-5. And I appreciate my time with
Wyeth more when I’ve had a chance to give voice to the
visions in my head.
ARE YOU FEELING ANY CREATIVE
TRAITS YET FROM YOUR BABY?
Good question. Wyeth is so free with dirt and paint. I love
watching him create things without any sense of what he
should or shouldn’t do. Making something is pure sensory
experience for him without any regard for the end. I have
a lot to learn from him.
HOW DOES THE SOUTHWEST INFLU-
ENCE YOUR WORK?
Most of my work is a meditation on the cyclical, almost
gravitational pull I feel to New Mexico. When I was in
high school I wanted to leave the southwest and never
come back. I went to college and graduate school in the
northeast and didn’t think I’d ever live in that part of
the country again. Then five years ago my husband Seth
and I took a road trip through southern New Mexico
and for the first time I fell in love with where I was from.
Photographing the landscape opened my eyes to some-