This lady is a serious painter of serious subjects. Take one part magical realism, one part mystical symbolism, one part visionary cartography - as in can't get there from here or it would have been done already. I can't say too much here or I'm going to get into trouble. Point is - she paints. Seems like everything she's thinking about ends up paint. Or poetry. Or vegetables. Something, anyway. A heavy duty manifester (word's not in the spellchecker, would you believe it?) and tireless prodder of herself and things around her. I like the following painting for it's - to me - overt good humor brought to hone the edge of a message about the United States continuing consumption of its Native population and their resources. I always called it "the consumer kachina" but the notecard I scanned it from say it's called "the consumer"
I'm sure Cynthia will straighten me on the materials and dates and names and all of that - right Cynthia? Cynthia sent me a print of this piece right around the time we were having a rather extended dialog about the early Mac II color computers. She claims I bent her brain with beams of light or radio waves or some such thing but I think she was that way already was and was just looking for someone to lay it on.
I must admit I probably provoked Cynthia by modifying Consumer Kachina on an early color mac and sending her a photograph produced from the electronically scan-lined from the Photoshop file. I believe she thought I'd actually painted the picture - as if! Below is the original image. Pardon me, Mattel, please don't sue.
I don't know anything about the American Indian mythology that informs this painting but I like the dark and echoing feel of it. Something about this piece looks familiar...
Here's Cynthia and m'buddy Reno sometime backwhen. I've some recent pictures of them but forgot where they are. Anyway, this one is nice and they don't look that much different even though it's got to be about 10 years.
Now, if you want to talk about different - here's a photo I took of Reno looking rough - when we were both up in Truchas New Mexico. I was probably living in his driveway or something - a bad habit of mine, but one that I enjoyed the hell out of. Ride em' cowboy...
Inside somebody's truck, probably dropping down off the llano to Santa Fe - fella seems to be concentrating pretty hard, just rolling along...
Cynthia says she's stopped painting now - and has re-engineered herself into a computer artist - whatever the heck that is. Here's something she sent me over "the net" just the other day. Musta been left over from the Halloween / day of the Dead season - either that or Cyn's getting morbid.
