Well Why Not

     
            I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me -- shapes and ideas so near to me -- so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.To create one's own world, in any of the arts, takes courage. Making your unknown known is the important thing
                                                                                                    -- Georgia O'Keeffe


            I encountered a true original the other day at the annual artist studio tour in Scottsdale, artist Mary Larue Wells. Here's one woman who has found the courage to create her own world (www.marylaruewells.com),  a world filled with things in her head not like anyone has taught her. Wells is a surrealist, painting from an inner landscape with artistic perspective that offers a decidedly whimsical twist on reality.  She's shown in prestigious venues across the country Including NYC, Washington D.C. and Hilton Head. She's also has had numerous one-person shows including The National Wildlife Federation and The U.S. Geological Survey. One of her neighbors, an art critic, said about her work: "Take one perspective, turn it upside down or inside out and there might be something this witty artist sees worth wrapping her brush around. Her mind's been working this way for 70 years and she still is feisty as ever. When asked why a girl riding a pig in her painting is holding a stick with a matching pig on it, she replied, "Well why not?"
  
A Vision Unique

            When I saw a copy of her Meerkats Descending inspired by Marcel Duchamp's Nudes Descending a Staircase (the original painting had been bought, she said, by a man who collected meerkats...I know!... where on earth did he keep them?) I laughed out loud, loving the quaint, unexpected, tongue-in-cheek interactive play of images she'd conjured up. Most of the art I saw at her studio had that same quality of surprising freshness and fearlessness. I was captivated and told her I was writing about the absolute necessity of continuing to embrace creativity as we move on in life. She knew right away what I was talking about.  Forthright and refreshingly modest about her considerable talents and successful professional career, she says matter-of-factly that at 70 she's still working but now dealing with macular degeneration and she might not recognize me if I came to visit her again. I was taken aback when she told me this but thought immediately of other instances of creative artistic genius that bloomed anew despite incipient health challenges in later years: Matisse at 72 said he'd found une seconde vie (a second life) when he switched from painting to cutouts after he became confined to a wheelchair. Renoir, in his mid seventies and  almost crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, tied brushes to his hands and proclaimed he had just begun to learn to paint. Painter Georgia O'Keeffe kept on working by switching to  clay, watercolor and charcoal when she experienced macular degeneration in her eighties. Other artists like Monet, Degas and Rembrandt also spring to mind as examples of artists who adapted to health challenges, finding new ways to express their visionary sensibilities.

Courage To Create

         Mary Wells' website features a selection of images, all interesting and accessible, like the artist herself. But it's hard to digitally capture the sometimes shocking originality, the sense of other worldliness and appealing oddity so in evidence when you visit her studio and see her original work all together in one place. She published her book From an Inner Landscape in 2010 and her surrealistic paintings with a twist present ageless, magical and wise creatures living out their lives in dramas that are born in her imagination, her 'inner landscape'. The same kind of landscape Georgia O'Keeffe talked about  when she said that to create one's own world takes courage and that making your unknown known is the important thing.  The take away here, if you're looking for messages in your art, is that moving on in life, digging in and growing older asks you to ponder the question of what you can do different and maybe even better with age. It's not really about 'How much have I lost'  it's about 'How much do I have yet to experience and share and contribute.' Well why not? At wisdom's edge how could it be otherwise.