The jackrabbits leap up, signaling, fighting, and alert to coyotes on the Llano Estacado. On this great table land shared between New Mexico and Texas, the plants are low and dry, the colors subtle and puzzling. Water is forbiddingly scarce. Cozy for jackrabbits.
Oil on Yupo, 60″ x 63″
We can pretend that JMW Turner visited Greece. His watercolors of the Acropolis and the Gate of Theseus tell us of his sympathies for Athens. To make those, he studied drawings by artists who had been there. If we want, we can imagine that he visited Marathon. With his back to the bay, he walked toward the plain where the sunset was trumpeting the old battle, Golden grass shone on the Tomb of the Athenians. He could make a watercolor right there.
Or we might ask what he would think if his spirit strayed to Marathon, Texas. It can look just like this.
Oil on Yupo, 26″ x 40″
The trail in this red canyon is long and dusty. At the furthest point, the red rock walls capture a warm, shallow pond, fed by a tiny spring. In the afternoon, we and the birds and dragonflies wade in. The water feeds willows and makes our air feel cool while our eyes are stunned with warm light. In the night, the coyotes drink here. They have run in from the desert, through a gap in the rocks, fresh from hunting jackrabbits.
The heavy clouds at Cline’s Corners are reflecting down on us the orange of burning energy – the beacon of the venerable and garish tourist stop, and the lights of the traffic on Interstate 40. Snow has fallen on the dry, grassy hills, on the pinon and cedar. There is plenty of room out here to be quiet and safe. It is only that hot intersection of gas stations, souvenirs, snacks, and bright parking lots that reminds us we live in two worlds.
We are driving to that snowy white mountain range. We are careful to avoid the ice patches on the road. More storms will soon bury these pastures in white. Where, in spring, antelope and cattle saw a little green, and tasty seeds in August, there is sour brown grass, cold as the air. Under that ground, mice and hares and prairie dogs hide in burrows, and the coyotes watch.
Maun Elephant
Like most of my collages, Maun Elephant is cut from Yupo and stapled to Yupo. Because glue is not as lasting as a strong pin, I hold the collages together with stainless steel staples. I’m not hiding this process; the staples are undisguised. The colors in these collages come from oil, acrylic, ink, and graphite painted on sheets that were then sacrificed to the scissors. The method of cutting has to be straightforward – continuous and usually counterclockwise around the outside edge of the form. This is drawing rather than surface molding. The open and commonplace manufacture shows. It is not my tricks in performance that matter, it is the way we read the path of the line. If the raw nature of it annoys you, that’s the beginning of enjoying it.
Maun Elephant is in admiration of my friend Debra Stevens and her Elephant Havens project in Botswana.
Isleta, 2016
Isleta just means little island, but the place is like a knife. The Tewa word for this open place of sun and wind is Shiewhibak. At this pueblo on the Rio Grande, on a spit of ancient lava, light bleaches the fields to dry colors. Albuquerque is shouldering in from the north. The land is both bucolic and fierce. Rabbits and cattle love this place, and, nearby, there is a casino that supports it.
Wushan
I was contemplating the water as we sailed on the Yangtze. I did this for hours there, and on the Li river. Every body of water has its own color. The Li seemed dark under its reflections, and the Yangtze a thick sage tea. It’s tempting to call it jade, but the Yangtze has more threat and promise than even the most beautiful stone. When we came to Wushan, the bittersweet red arc of the bridge appeared. At a distance it is fragile, nothing more than a mark. It carries a highway above the river. It seems the perfect red calligraphy commenting on the powerful hills.
Fields at Mora
Dennis Boatright, 2017
As Atlas lay down a piece of the globe
A remnant became a totality
Heartened was I to have stumbled across it
With its yellow patch of the sun’s memory
And the blue of the ocean’s refrain
But the presence of the grass
Oh how it presented its secrets to me
As If I were the only one who could see them
So I promised myself that one day I would return
To lie under the dark presence
And become a brother of the earth there
With the gray blue sky as my forever view
In the wondrous and final grasp
Of the fields at Mora.
Moon at Caprock
Dennis Boatright, 2018
The orb
Shadowed and pregnant
Is a dweller we all know
She is the origin, the maternal
Of all
Marking her way by taunting us
Blurred today
Bombastically orange sometimes
Recedingly blue from her perchless perch
Dangling like a great opening
A door to our fate
Imbuing the chaos below
An emotional mother is dangerous
To her children
And we are come forth from her milk
This somatic treasure that allows
The seen to become the known
Like the way the hills pour onto the fields
But not really
For how can they be separate or
Even blended
When the essence of both
Is born of her eye
And makes me wonder if night is her day