Author: hgwinn

The intuition hides out in a part of my thinking that doesn’t have reliable words attached to it. It doesn’t even operate within parameters that I can get a grip on. It is beyond reason, above rationale, outside of calculations, without logic, and yet it holds innumerable gifts. It is generally dependable, that is, if I’m willing to go with its peculiar ways, and be okay without knowing in any logical fashion where it is leading me and be okay with trusting it even when I can’t put the ideas in a list, in a box, or arrange them by color, size, direction, texture, shape or line. “Intuition” is a word I hear people use when they talk about knowing something without having learned it. I remember when my son was quite young he could often provide answers to mathematical problems without knowing how he arrived at them. Intuitive knowing isn’t arrived at through conscious reasoning or manifested through deductive process. It has a spiritual quality, an insightful way about it and often the intuition is loaded with emotion.  Many Christians, including me, believe intuitive knowing is a gift from the Holy Spirit.
“Operating intuitively” is the way I choose to think about the way I create. Whether I’m journaling, painting, collaging or shaping an assemblage, I START with materials that I select without any rational process. For a painting, I like to brush paint on paper or on a gessoed panel with free flowing strokes with no thought of what the final product will look like. I may choose a favorite color, or some colors on my palette that are suffering from neglect. Or I choose colors that seem to match my mood, or the weather outside my studio window.  Maybe what’s floating in the atmosphere prompts color choices: could be peace, tension, sadness, expectation, joy, hope or some other emotion. After a few layers of paint I often select some papers from my huge collection and glue them into the composition.
Below are several different STARTS with notations about how many layers of paint have been intuitively applied to the paper:
ONE LAYER:                                               TWO LAYERS:

FOUR LAYERS:I continue to add, intuitively, to the surface……adding a variety of strokes, stamping patterns on the composition, dropping in some texture (pumice gel, opaque flakes, tar gel, sand…..) Eventually what I see on the paper may call to my more rational side. A more representational image may begin to develop. Possibilities are wide open……….the composition begins to “tell me” what it wants to be! I listen, I ponder, I asses. Rarely is there one direct way to completion.

I love the desert! Where I live, we’re actually having a winter this year. We even had a white Christmas! It was exquisite and brought a quiet calm with it. New snow is predicted! We have had enough snow to make desert rats shudder in fear that “climate change” may be drastic. I go to my portfolio album to reassure myself with my hot images of desert land. Maybe I’ll even put some orange pigments on my palette in the studio and put the brush to paper reminding myself of hot days among my favorite cliffs and try to be a better sport about winter.

Sun Cliffs
watermedia collage
14X14 inches

God’s warm spirit resides in my spirit, there’s actually no place I can go to avoid God’s spirit, or be out of his sight. If I climb to the sky, he’s there! If I go underground, he’s there! Even if I fly on the wings of the morning to the far western horizon, he’d find me there in a minute- he’s already there waiting. (adapted from Psalm 139: 7-10)

Labyrinth Crevice
watermedia collage
8X10X2 inches

When I teach a painting class, I often challenge painters to think about painting the shapes which occur between objects. In the art world, we call it “painting the negative.” That is “emphasize the positive shapes by painting in the spaces between them.” For beginning painters it is often a difficult concept to grasp; however, when the aha moment occurs a leap of skill and understanding enriches the painting surface immediately. One is never the same after he “gets it.” The artist begins to see how a composition is woven together by developing the relationships between the positive and the negative. Matisse put it this way, “I don’t paint things. I paint only the difference between things.” Truly, it is a metaphor for a deeper understanding of life events. As we see  differences, appreciate them, accept them, and acknowledge their value, life’s journey develops a confident trust in the positive, supported by the “spaces between.”

“Geranium Joy”
(watermedia/collage, 12X12X2 inches)

The shapes of the dark spaces between the shapes of the leaves and stems supports and establishes the brilliance of “Geranium Joy” in a similar way that rest, quietness, retreat and contemplation support and establish life’s joys.

I paint not by sight,
but by faith.
Faith gives you sight.
A. Ferguson

“INTO DEEP”
(collage, 10X10X2 inches)

“I like to have the maximum lack of control
so things can happen
that I can’t think of.”
Robert Rauschenberg

I’ve written about this quote before, emphasizing how it is that “thinking,” (rational logic) can get in the way during creative pursuits. Recently I’ve had a deeper revelation about this quote. It is a spiritual lesson in letting go of control and trusting the ONE TRUE CREATOR to make things happen in my life, including my relationships, my prayers, my devotional practices, my giving, my studies. That is not to exclude my creative expressions in paint, paper and varied embellishments. I want to have “lack of control” even the “maximum lack of control” but just imagine what could happen! ! ! Chaos? or…more meaningful events, experiences, paintings, collages than I could possibly THINK of? Things can happen that my tiny finite mind cannot think of!
Could Rauschenberg have thought about the spiritual implications of this statement? Could he have thought, as I do, that all activities and thoughts have spiritual content? Or is this deeper spiritual revelation that has come through his words something that has happened that he couldn’t have thought of?

I savored these astonishing autumnal aspens on the property of the Fechin House in Taos, NM, home for a period of time in the twentieth century to artist Nicolai Fechin, a fabulous painter who came here from Russia. The house and studio have many of his creative appointments, carvings and some of his paintings and drawings.  It is open-to-the-public, a delightful inspiration.

I’ve been tripping nearby; I’ve always claimed, “New Mexico is God’s country.”  Many of our nation’s finest painters came here early in the twentieth century. The light, the hues, the textures, the vistas, the spirit they found here is still here and it is still inspiring some awesome expressions. The grace of the Almighty, fully evident around me where I live,  poignantly touches me with freshness when I’m tripping.I have just returned from a quick jaunt around a portion of this state known for the artists it has both bred and attracted from afar.  Saturated and brimming over with inspiration from the textures I’ve encountered, I’m eager to return to the studio and surround myself and my panels with compositional elements which sometimes speak softly into my spirit, and sometimes raucously make demands about their plans to be part of my expressions.

Those elements (color, texture, shape, line) woo me into a love affair that sometimes pushes and pulls, but often soothes, comforts and multiplies life-giving meaning. My personal windows are open, welcoming “God’s country” to abide in my spirit and to brush it’s inimitable marks on my compositions.