Where Spirits Dwell, emotionally

"Where Spirits Dwell" -my friends Dr. Mary Carver, Dr. Christy Vincent. Blessed 

"Art is about emotion; if art  needs to be explained it is no longer art." 

                                                                                            --Renoir

Titles for paintings are sometime difficult to come by, and at other times they'are inherent.

So it was when I was commissioned to paint a retirement gift for great friend and spiritual  leader Dr. Christy Vincent, retiring from my dear former University of Central Oklahoma Department of Mass Communication this spring.

Honored and intimidated by the request from my dear friend  Dr. Mary Carver, chair of the department, it took time to find an appropriate subject. Christy and her husband Dr. Don Drew have been generous with my art in the past, and I didn't want to duplicate anything I'd done, especially with our love of New Mexico.

But Ghost Ranch and Georgia O'Keefe was on our mutual agenda  as I approached it. Thinking of my friend and her spirituality, of our love for New Mexico and art, of the Department and students and colleagues, and of Ghost Ranch, the title was in my head before I began. "Where Spirits Dwell."

That was the east part.

Research, my photos, and others, history, multiple angles and lighting and moods and emotions  gelled. Compositions came and went. Formats changed. Two failures consumed paint and canvas. Then spirits spoke, in human voices, about "having fun," and "paint what you feel."

Thus it was, picking colors, choosing a frame ahead of time, that emotion came together, along with editing--tweaking, revising, whatever--that the gift of emotion came together.

I've been doing this long enough to know the every painting has at least one story, multiple versions, and the outcome is often more than planned or expected.

That's more than one of the stories of this painting.

The colors of enchantment

Ghost Ranch in New Mexico--Georgia O'Keefe country. The colors and landscapes of enchantment. 
Everywhere you turn there are dramatic landscapes and colors to spur the imagination. Ancient geology of millions of years on full display, always changing under the ever-fluid light of the vast sky.

Ghost Ranch and the Faraway Nearby

I had this article in today's Oklahoma Gazette. Can't wait to meet his photographer. Many of my stuents are coming too.

“It’s a seductive and powerful landscape, with a beguiling charm that didn’t want to let me go,” said the Santa Fe photographer of the legendary Ghost Ranch landscapes in New Mexico.

Oklahomans can share that experience when Craig Varjabedian’s exhibition of 69 large black and white images of the dramatic Georgia O’Keefe country opens Friday, Sept. 23 at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

Varjabedian is widely acclaimed for his images capturing the American West, taken over a photographic career of more than 35 years. The show features photos found in his Wrangler Award-winning companion book to the exhibition, Ghost Ranch and the Faraway Nearby.

Why black and white when the landscape is renowned for its vibrant colors? “The place is much more subtle than just the colors,” he said. “I’m looking for things that are authentic.”

 “The world as I look at it is black and white,” Varjabedian said of capturing the mystique and beauty there. He had been visiting Ghost Ranch for about 10 years before he could take more than “just pretty pictures.”

“It took me a long time to figure out how to photograph that place. I became aware of the light—and that’s why black and white is so critical to what I wanted to do—it’s the light,” he said.

Varjabedian printed most of the 24-inch wide silver pints in his own darkroom, but had negatives scanned and digitally reproduced for about a dozen 30” by 40” “anchor” photos for the exhibition, he said.

“I work really hard in the darkroom to get the feeling I had at the moment I clicked the shutter, he said. “I hope the show allows people to join me in my experience, and also, that they might open doors to their own experiences.”

The exhibit, free and open to the public, will open at 4:30 p.m. with a reception followed by a book signing at 6:30. The show will be on display through Jan. 8, 2012.

Varjabedian will return Oct. 14-16 for a three-day photographic workshop that will include shooting at the Museum, the Clydesdale horses at Express Ranches, and historic Fort Reno.

“This is another way to reach out and get people to make their own images,” he said.