Dancing Delight

Deer Shaman after an Osage Petroglyph
Mixed media on paper by Phillip Hoyle

Jim dropped me off in Colorado Springs at the space where I was going to hang a show. I’d brought over twenty paintings to display and knew I was going to have to work fast and furious to get them hung. I’d been at it for over three hours with one short break and was pleased to have only one piece left to hang. I was very tired and the painting was just a little too large for comfort since the only place left to hang anything was very high, like many steps up a ladder, and a long lean off to the front and left. I wasn’t looking forward to the stretch and hoped I’d be able to get it in place without dropping it or scratching the frame. I was studying the challenge when a woman came in the front door.

“I stopped by to see the art,” she announced.

“So pleased you did. I’m the artist.”

When she introduced herself I realized she had purchased several of my paintings. I had sent her thank you notes. We made a little small talk while she quickly looked over the paintings and asked me about one that most attracted her. We talked a bit more. “It’s different from your others,” she commented. I agreed.

The painting featured a design I had worked with before but had never displayed: a dancing shaman in a headdress. This painting featured a bright red accent in the center and a border of white paint that when it ran elicited a rather esoteric feeling, at least in me.

“I want to take it.”

I called for Marie, the owner, who happily greeted the buyer and rang up the sale.

I wrapped the painting in paper. The customer left pleased. The shop owner was also pleased at the sale. I felt pretty sure the nail had not even cooled from being pounded in the wall just before the sale.

As my customer (and fan?) left I told her I was so pleased because the sale solved what I was going to do with the final painting I needed to hang. We laughed. I thanked her again.

Elk Shaman after a Ute petroglyph
Mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

I was so pleased when I got the show hung and even more when a couple of months later Marie called me to tell me she'd sold three more of my paintings--two to the same customer and one to a young friend of hers. They were quite happy, as was Marie, as was I.

In the past month I have been working again with the white borders and just finished a set of six paintings. They’re not yet framed, but I suspect within a few months they’ll be displayed at Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown. Hope you’ll stop by!

Denver, 2014

Finally!

Finally I have completed my collage, the one I've referred to before, that thrilled me with its content and stalled me in it's execution. Finally it's done and now waiting on the purchase of a piece of glass to complete its framing. I promised to show it to a friend tomorrow evening. Hope that's enough stress to move me!

But the artwork itself is what I am most focused on. In the past I made Artist Trading Cards by printing on maps. I'd print a cut of a Ute petroglyph on a Colorado map or an Osage petroglyph on a Missouri map. Then I wanted to see if I could do something larger--well actually I had a larger petroglyph print I wanted to mount on a larger map. So...

I gathered my pieces: a road map, several prints of the petroglyph in its strangely altered state, a quotation from William Clark's Journal, and my wits. I arranged my equipment and media products: glue, brayer, brushes, gesso, acrylic paints, India ink, stylus, a photo of native grasses of Missouri, a sample of early 19th century cursive handwriting, and about a gallon of piping hot coffee and my mug. 

I started the process--actually many starts and stops lasting over several weeks. (I'm ultimately a multi-tasker.) I mounted the map so the snaking Missouri River lies near the top of the ground. I watered down the white glue and spread it on the mat board and map, rolled the map onto the ground smoothing out bubbles with a brayer, and pressed it between waxed paper to dry while weighted down by big art books. When it was dry I looked at it again and again. Finally I brushed on water-thinned gesso leaving the riverbed unpainted. Several times I changed my mind about which print to collage into the piece. Finally I glued on a print made on translucent paper I thought might let some of the map features--colors and lines--show through. I placed it on the left-hand side below the river, added the box to the circle like in Leonardo DaVinci's study of human anatomical proportions, and decided to paint the native grasses on the right-hand side. 

I painted any number of samples of the grass cluster I would use. I wanted to represent the tall grass prairies common to the area in Lewis and Clark's 1804 explorations on their westward trek up the river. I mounted the print and painted in the grasses. Then I added a quote from the journal around the print. In order to represent the measurement obsession of both the European Renaissance and the exploring spirit shown in mapping rivers and otherwise measuring the newly-acquired Louisiana Purchase, I added the compass points and measurements Clark recorded for the day he also drew the "paintings and carveings" [sic] on the limestone cliff. For balance I drew in another figure--a snake from another Missouri petroglyph and added Clark's comment about how the place where he saw the petroglyphs was "a den of Rattle Snakes." Finally I was happy and have put to rest another piece of art. 

"Taking Measure" mixed media with collage by Phillip Hoyle

One of my art teachers, Polly Hammett, observed that my starting point in art seems usually to be content--in this case a fascination with petroglyphs, Lewis and Clark, 19th century mid-western experience, interaction of Native and Euro-Americans, maps, and so forth. It's no wonder this piece took so long to complete. Now off to another task--oh the framing.

Images Revisited

Snake Dance, acrylic washes on paper
by Phillip Hoyle

The exuberant dancing bear from the Lewis and Clark journals, an ink drawing by William Clark of a petroglyph he saw June 7, 1804 at a now long-gone site in mid-Missouri on the Missouri River near big Moniteau Creek, caught my interest when I first saw it and others in a study of Missouri petroglyphs. The journal told the site's location describing the artwork, and Clark drew at least five designs of what he saw there. The petroglyphs have been missing for decades probably destroyed by blasting to make the Katy Rail Road as it made its way west across the state. 

Whether my assessment of the mood is accurate or not, I liked the enthusiasm I sensed in the design. The journal didn't describe it as a dance or a bear but did mention rattlesnakes killed at the site. Responding to the description of the rocks and the denizens there, I painted what I called "Snake Dance" that used the dancing bear and another Missouri petroglyph of a rattler. Then I painted several other pieces with the bear image. In preparation for a black and white open show in a Denver gallery I reworked the design in a very graphic way creating a pinwheel with the figure. The painting was selected for the show. That interest led me to do more such pieces with the enthusiastic design. There were a couple of partner dances, then a trio (inspired by a 1937 oil painting "Trio" by American artist Walt Kuhn) I called "Pas de Trois" (on display at Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown) and eventually "Chorus Line Bears." 

Chorus Line Bears, Acrylic on paper by Phillip Hoyle

A few weeks ago the bear again got my attention. The design is back, now as a print and the graphic manipulation has taken a new turn. The bear has four legs and four arms outstretched imitating the famous DaVinci anatomical proportional study. My medium is mixed media with a linoblock print of the transmogrified bear. Two of these I am adding to my display of paintings at Colorado Mountain Art Gallery in Georgetown, CO, that quaint old mining town just east of the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70.

Proportional Studies: Intertribal
Renaissance
Mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

I joined the co-op gallery last November and have enjoyed the wide variety of fine artwork there, all done by Colorado artists. And I've found more in Georgetown: good food in bakeries, cafes, and restaurants, good coffee, good shopping for a wide vareity of wares including gifts and used books. I recall how much my mother loved the town; I am growing to appreciate it as well. Since I now sound like a promoter I'll go on to mention the summertime rides on the narrow-gauge train there and summer tours of the very nice museum in the historical Hotel de Paris. 

The gallery sits directly across the street from the museum and is open seven days a week (11-4 through April, then 10-5 for the summer). Check on line for more information on the Gallery and other area art programs.

Painting Petroglyphs

On the Trail, mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

    “I am painting petroglyphs,” I write.

     My niggling internal editor suggests, “Isn’t that painting pictographs? One chips away to make petroglyphs.”

     “No,” I insist. “I’m painting petroglyphs.” I work wildly, spraying a water mist on paper, splashing paints of various shades of brown onto the wetness, letting the colors run.

                                                                                         

     Occasionally I look up at the petroglyph rubbings that hang on the walls of my studio. I recall standing against the escarpment as I rubbed them, my skin getting burned in the western Colorado sun. The designs seemed so beautiful to me, carved on the sandstone walls and boulders out there under the blue sky, but so ugly when I wanted to hang them on the walls of my apartment. Crayon rubbings on yellowing newsprint. Pathetic looking. I had to do something artistic with these crude rubbings so I could continue to enjoy their beauty and celebrate the feelings they stimulated within me. Collage was my answer. I bought mat boards and started cutting, arranging, gluing. I replicated depth, depicting the rough texture and cracks in the rocks. I was full of ideas and enjoyed creating design, color, and contrast. I started becoming an artist so I could remember.

     While my paper collage contrasted greatly with the hard medium of the original creators’ work, making them did connect me with those ancient artists. They chipped away at the rocks to create an environment of ideas, mnemonics, and myths. I cut and pasted together a world of imagination that carried me back into childhood visits to my grandparents’ farm and forward into a life grounded in such memories.

     The parade of deer, moose, bears, horses, foot and handprints, lines, arrows, stars, medicine wheels, and unnamable creatures elicited an ancient world in my imagination. They conjured a life of wickiups and teepees, of cooking fires and ceremonial smoke. The wind that blew down the Shavano Valley seemed to carry the sounds of chanting, hoof falls, snorting animals, and playing children.

I found in these rock carvings a way to imagine

a life of the past;

I found in them a topic for research;

I found a subject for reflection,

An experience of beauty.

     Crude. That’s what W. C. McKern called these Ute petroglyphs. From his point of view as an ethnologist doing a study for the Smithsonian Institute in the early 1920’s, they were crude chippings of an inferior culture. His evaluation reflected an assumption of trappers, who contrasted their impression of Ute life with that of the Plains Indian tribes much more influenced by white trade goods and ideas. His judgment also reflected philosophical and scientific biases that, in my opinion, missed what these petroglyphs were in themselves and what they represented to the people who made them. The great problem with these markings lies in the fact that it is impossible to know what they represented. Even Native American scholars admit they don’t know. The passing of centuries created an impassable gap, leaving us ignorant, unable to guess with any kind of certainty at the meanings of these scratches. Their permanence laughs at the changes of the societies that made them and of those that still gaze upon them.

     There they remain on isolated canyon walls, colored only by desert paint in blacks and browns. I imagine them peopled, complemented by the colors of feathers and beadwork, by the odors of cooking meat and smoking tobacco, by the sounds of milling horse herds and the melody of a flute. As I rub them, I hear a truck pass on the road below, a hawk call in the sky above, a grasshopper’s wings crackle in the dry desert atmosphere. As I cut the images for my collages, I hear the furnace in the apartment click on and the rush of wind pushing through the vent. As I paint them on paper, I hear footfalls cross the floor above and the motor circulate water in the hot tub.

     I lift the edge of the paper to make the paint run and wonder what the Ute was thinking as he pecked away at the rock. What was his artistic concern? How long did he look for the harder rock to use as a tool? Perhaps he was trying to remind himself of the spirit of the animal he killed to feed his family, his chipping a prayer of gratitude. Maybe he was simply making marks to distance himself from the activity of the camp like a student doodling during a lecture.

     What am I doing? I am thinking about what colors to select to best leave the impression of sandstone. Certainly I am distancing myself from the others with whom I live, but I think I am doing more. I am creating a reminder of the valley, of its plenitude of deer, elk, plants, beaver, gushing springs, rugged rocks, and endless blue sky. I am recalling the past of my imagination to keep alive the leisure of childhood, its unfettered freedom, its sense of unlimited possibility. I am celebrating my connection with the past, with a human spirit that reaches far beyond my family, society, and culture. I made collages and now I paint to show my children and grandchildren life is more than making a living. It is also, and necessarily, an expression of spirit, of beauty, of art.

     I paint my petroglyphs, or more precisely my petroglyph designs, in a work that seems to me as ancient as it is contemporary.

Denver 2006

Paintings by P. Hoyle On the Trail (above) and The Hunt; photo of me in my studio.

The Hunt

Table Talk: Healing Hands

     As a minister making hospital calls, I feared a patient might be healed miraculously when I prayed with them. I admitted this in a discussion group with laypersons. When asked why, I confessed that I assumed it would ruin my life as a plain and ordinary person and my career as a liberal minister. I’d hate to be a faith healer in a church of rationalists. One woman in the group, Shirley, said, “But, Phillip, you have Reiki hands. I knew that the moment I met you.”

     I wasn’t sure what Reiki hands were, but I did understand that she assumed I had some kind of healing gift. Shirley couldn’t imagine why I didn’t want to use it. The image of myself as a healer was almost overpowering, an assault on my pragmatic upbringing and liberal education. I thought it appropriate to leave healing to the medics and for me to support patients in related issues such as dealing with health care systems. I helped parishioners to confront their religious questions and, in general, to clarify their attitudes towards and acceptance of their medical therapy. I prayed with patients that God would enhance their natural ability to heal.

     Now, even as I do bodywork, I keep hoping people won’t assume their healing is a direct result of a special power I hold. I recall the phrase from some novel about a character who had hands with “palms as hot and sweaty as a faith healer’s.” My palms get hot during massage. Perhaps it was the heat that alerted Shirley to the possibility I could be a healer. But to me, my hands seem to be simply part of who I am. I don’t want to be a faith healer.

     “Those hands.” It’s the compliment I have most often received from teachers, friends, and clients. “Wonderful hands.” “Healing hands.” I gave up protesting and now simply thank people who remark about my hands. They are my main tools, and I am thankful that they are effective in my work. Certainly they are a gift since I did nothing to earn them. I felt like a client put me on the line over my reluctance to understand myself as a healer. She told me about a tumor she had discovered on her back, at the base of the neck near the spine, and asked me to put my hand on it. I did so, placing my hand over the spot she indicated. I could feel a slight protuberance, cupped my hand over it, and left my hand in place for several minutes. When I finally moved it, she asked, “Was it your hand or my skin that was so hot?” I reported that her skin had felt cool to my touch.

     Then she asked, “Did you feel malignancy in the tumor?” I didn’t have a clue what I was feeling, except my own discomfort at her assumption that I’d know anything. It seemed one thing for me to place my hand on someone’s body and quite another to imagine I could make a diagnosis from doing so. I told her I didn’t know what I was feeling there. I meekly excused myself on the basis of inexperience.

     While I do not have any inclination towards intuitive diagnosis and have received little training in healing energy work, people still want me to place my hands on them. I touch people in the healing context of massage. I am not a Hindu healer, but some of my clients see brilliant colors when I place my hands over their chakras. I am not trained in Japanese Reiki methods and thought, but when I am around such healers, they assume I am one of them. Certainly, I am some kind of healer, and bodywork modalities from other religious backgrounds are encouraging me to integrate my own healing tradition into massage.

     Being a Reiki healer herself, Shirley understands the complexities of healing. She knows how the laying on of hands may not take away a disease but simply bring perspective to one’s attitude toward it. Like any minister, she believes that emotional releases may pave the way for a deeper healing of the psyche or the body. Shirley knows the kinds of success and failure I have sought to sidestep through my objections to healing work and my reluctance to enter into it.

     I avoided this work as a minister, but I cannot avoid it now as a massage therapist. I may be impeded by my own attitudes of suspicion, doubt, and fear, but I am willing to lay my hands on someone’s body where they feel pain or suspect some other malady. If there is power, it will do its work. I doubt that it is my power, but if the heat from my hands does have an effect I do not understand, I am willing to let that energy heal. Expect something good to happen in the massage; I do. But please don’t expect a diagnosis or a miracle if you get a massage from me. 

Oh Divine healing, may we reject the temptation to turn your work into a moralized commodity that we deserve or not deserve but want anyway. May we steer clear of turning your great mystery into magic that we can control and use. We bow before your ultimately unknowable power with humility and awe, and sometimes are bold enough to ask you for a miracle. Amen.

    

Paintings by P. Hoyle Extension, Hand and Foot 7, Hand and Foot 19