Forbidden Forest

Forbidden Forest, Paintings by Alexandra Ortiz, 2012.

In the third grade my teacher traded with another teacher for the sections of science and art. One day my class was at the science teacher’s room but for some reason we were doing art.  We were drawing trees. If I recall correctly, the teacher told us to do whatever we want; that is never the case. There were a few trees on my paper. I decided to color the trunk of one blue.  Ms. C, we'll call her, found this completely unacceptable. She scolded me asking if I had ever seen a blue tree. I, being incredibly shy at the time, didn't have the time to answer that I had seen one on TV. She finished her own sentence, "NO, THERE ARE NO BLUE TREES." 

Trees were always a subject I avoided, but I thought if I was going to paint trees, they would be my trees. This body of work is an investigation of trees as I perceived them. I studied from life taking photos on my phone and drawing the ones I could get close enough to. Before this I only noticed trees from a distance. They’re different up close. The deeper you get into my forest the more magical things can happen. The closer you get to civilization, the more reality happens.

It felt like forever creating this show. I insisted on making my own canvases for nearly all the pieces in this body of work, but I'm glad I did. I otherwise wouldn't have been able to work on this scale. These are the largest paintings I've made so far, not to mention the most on one subject, eighteen pieces.

Flight, Acrylic on canvas, 24''x30''

I thought I'd talk about Flight first because it is the title painting of the show. In the Forbidden Forest there are many magical things that happen. Flight is what happens after the fish climb trees.  One of the fish thought climbing the tree was good, but more could be done. The leaves were all falling off the trees anyway, so this fish took two before they fell. When they were climbing trees the fish saw birds flying. The one who took the leaves flapped them like the birds did and took off. I decided to use this one for the title of the show because   it best showed what is in the rest of the show, and also has blue trees in it.

To Climb Trees, Acrylic on canvas, 24''x30''

To Climb Trees was the first painting I created for the series. In this painting the river the fish lived in suddenly dried up. They don't know why. It just did. One fish gives up and dies. Another fish gets scared and nearly faints. But since this forest is a magical one, the fish continue living out of water. The tallest fish sees a black bird sitting on a tree far away and gets an idea. The bird seems to be fine in that tree, maybe fish should climb trees.

Wednesday's Child, Acrylic on canvas, 32''x42''

Wednesdays Child is based on a song by Vermillion Lies by the same title. The song is about what children are supposed to be based on what day of the week they were born. 

Monday's Child is fair of face (narcissist)

Tuesday's child is full of grace (a little stiff)

Wednesday's child is full of woe (whatever)

Thursday's child has far to go (get out)

Friday's child is kind and giving (sucker)

Saturday's child works hard for a living (overachiever)

But the child that was born on the Sabbath Day
Is blithe and bony and good and gay

Through the whole song the singer sings about how the day she was born on wasn't her day and she was angry. She sings about things she would change if she could like rewriting story books and rewriting all the songs on the radio. Personally, I don't know what day I was born on. I would want to be Saturday's child because Saturdays are usually when I get the most work done. The fish in this painting are overachievers.

Charlie Brown, Acrylic on canvas, 3'x3'

There are boundaries to the Forbidden Forest. When there are walls or fences that is where the forest ends. Charlie Brown, the cartoon, is one of my favorites. He got lot of bad breaks in life and was generally insecure, but he had good friends. There are several comic strips with him sitting at a brick wall talking to his best friend, Linus. In this painting, the red tree tries to escape the boundaries but there is a fence in the way. One of the roots grows on the other side, but the rest is stuck in the forest. Colorful trees have to stay where the magic is. Magic stays in the forest. If the trees leave, they might lose their color.

Wire Fence, Acrylic on canvas, 3'x3'

Wire Fence shows another edge of the forest. One might find these trees and try to sneak in the forest, but there is a tall fence in the way.

For me this show has been a small rebellion, perhaps the smallest I could make. That science teacher may never hear of this art show, but still, eventually, I stood up to her in my own way.

About the Artist:

Alexandra Ortiz is a Bakersfield based artist who has been painting for five years.  At Bakersfield College she earned an Associate of Art with concentrations in Graphic Design and Art History. Alex currently attends California State University Bakersfield (Art Major). She is a member of the artist groups, The Foundry Gallery of Bakersfield and The Working Artist Collective of CSUB. She recently led a workshop, “Meditative Drawing” at the Art for Healing Center of Mercy Hospital.

About NX ArtHouse

"No Worries, just coffee art and love."

The nX is a place for art, poetry, music and coffee. It is a nonprofit based on an internet cafe LisaAnn Lobosso used to own. She has opened her own home up for the arts.  There are resident artists, a good espresso machine, and many events. Some events are Speakeasy, an open mic event for musicians and spoken word artists, On the Fly, a poetry event with dueling poets and a featured performer from out of town, and ROFL Comedy Night and many ongoing healing arts functions. It is located at 2995 North Baker, Bakersfield CA.




For Further Reading:

The Whole Show.

NX ArtHouse

Wednesday's Child, by Vermillion Lies

Walking Fish

Beginnings

Part One: Greatest Hits

Classes at the good ol' university have started up again. I have SO MUCH homework due tomorrow for other classes, but I thought I'd take a break to write a blog (don't worry I have hours and hours to do my other homework). An assignment for one of the better art classes was to write about my first memorable experience with art. My response was short (only a paragraph) but I thought it would be a good idea to think about it some more and share here, because I love my readers so much (or the people who pretend to read and only look at the pictures. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE!) I am calling this my greatest hits because there were many more art experiences as a child, but for the sake of the blog (and my homework time) I kept this relitively short.

Elementary Happenings:

One of my first experiences with other people's art I remember is from reading the children's book Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. The illustrations were done in watercolor, emphasis on the color. It depicted a fish who's scales were blue, purple, green and shiny colors. The fish gave away all his shiny scales so everyone could be a little shiny; a little special. This and other children's books, including but not limited to Whinnie the Pooh, and Dr. Seuss's One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, are things I remember drawing from. I also drew characters from cartoons and comics from the newspaper. I was not short of crayons and pencils. I remember drawing the scales of that fish; So many scales. (Half circle. half circle. half circle...)

Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister

Once in elementary school we were drawing trees for some reason. There were a few trees on my paper. I decided to color the trunk of one blue. If I recall correctly, the teacher told us to do whatever we want; I have since learned that that is never the case. Ms. C, we'll call her, found this completely unacceptable. She scolded me asking if I had ever seen a blue tree. I, being incredibly shy at the time, didn't have the time to answer that I had seen one on TV. She finished her own sentence, "NO, THERE ARE NO BLUE TREES." That one sure stuck.

In the fifth grade my class was drawing flowers. We used something like conte crayon or colored charcoal; I don't remember, I was a kid at the time! What I do remember is the stuff was smearable and it got all over my hands. I first drew the flower in pencil from whatever we were drawing from. The class only had a certain amount of time, and some didn't get to color theirs. I colored mine pink with yellow dots for the middle. Only one flower was required, but I decided to make one and a half, because I thought it looked better. I noticed that the chalk or charcoal, maybe it was pastel, smeared, so I went with it and made smeared on purpose to color the whole thing. Then I wrote 'alex' in purple at the bottom of the paper in cursive, because I had just learned it, with two underlines beneath it. I gave that drawing to one of my aunts. She liked it enough to matt and frame it. [she has since passed away, so now the picture resides in my studio]

Elementary School Flowers

Art Classes:

I was reluctant to take art classes, and still am, because I thought or think I know what I’m doing. Seinor year in High School, when I finally gave in, I took an art class. One previous teacher had left so I got a brand new teacher (another thing I experienced often). In Ms. N's or Ms. T's class, she changed her name while I was there, I sort of learned how to mix colors of paint. The whole class she complained about how she had no good examples from students of the assignments because the ones who did well took home their projects. At the end of class, I, being either arrogant enough or considerate enough, gave her all my assignments. I wasn't going to use it anyway because I decided I would be an artist. I saw her more recently and she was grateful for the work I left behind.

For some reason I thought it was a good idea to take a painting class at the craft store during the winter after high school, because I wasn't doing anything at the time. I was still reluctant about it because I had fiddled around with paints on my own and thought what I made was fan-tastic, even though in retrospect it wasn’t that great. The woman who usually taught that class had left to teach at a better place (or to live on a nice farm somewhere), so they had an old man come to teach the class. He was a landscape artist. The class was simply titled oil painting. I painted generic landscape over three hour long classes. From that class I got a vast knowledge of how to paint clouds.

Also, I didn't learn how to build canvasses until college. . . That's another story, so this is all you get, for now.

Part Two: Painting

Thinking about the beginning is the easy part. This already happened and I know the outcome of this period of time. It’s the here and now that gets more complex. Here is the abridged version of my beginnings of painting.

The year was 2007 and it was the summer after high school. I had only had a quarter's worth of general art lessons in high school and I decided to try my hand at making paintings of in my very own way. I had been told how colors mixed but didn't care to remember. I purchased a set of acrylic craft paint, a standard set of numbered paintbrushes, and a package of three canvass boards to work on. I even had my very own apron made of what seemed to be canvass.

In the sunshine of my backyard, I mixed colors out of the primaries: red, yellow, blue, black and white. I painted things I wasn't able to try in high school with as much paint as I wanted. I gave myself as much space as possible covering the table I was using with newspaper. I didn't have an easel because they were expensive (but that's another blog) so I either painted flat or held the canvass in my hands. This was a delightfully messy process.

Cat Painting 2007

I favored the thicker brushes over the small ones and ended up sticking to two or three at a time. The great thing about it was I didn't have to paint for anyone. There were no assignments to paint flowers. I could make things abstract. They didn’t have to stand for anything. Looking back, I would consider paintings like this a beautiful stutter before learning to speak. (Abstracts can be greater than what I started with, but these days I’m learning a language of color and figures and forms. Maybe one day I can go back to abstraction, but not now.)

I worked on this surgery painting from sun up to sun down one summer day, then for a few more hours with the porch light on. It was based on a dream I had. I was going completely off memory/imagination. I didn't know much about faces at the time. Nobody wanted to sit for me to draw them, so I generally avoided faces. I worked on how the light should have come from the source, shown in the painting. It was a clown doctor with green hair. I modeled his hand after my own and his lamp after my own and imagined the light. I used odd colors to indicate that it was MY painting. (If you’re into having things the color they really are, that’s your business, not mine.) I am glad I worked so hard on it, my first “study” and am even gladder I kept the darn thing long. I get a kick out of looking at it now. Studies are important, you know.

Dream 2007

After that I had decided to paint on anything and everything. I painted on Christmas wrapping paper. I painted on cardboard. Real canvass was scarce because I didn't have the cash for it and I had no idea how to make it myself. I painted with my fingers, mixing directly on the surface I was using. I came up with so many colors and didn't care exactly how I got them. Everything was by chance. Everything was intuition. Everything was a delightful mess. (I have since learned reasons for things and am working on the cleanliness part as well, although there’s nothing like paint on your hands.)

Oriental Sunset 2007

It was a great feeling. No one else I knew could or wanted to pick up a paintbrush. No one else I knew could create. Sure, there were people in my life who used to make art; people who used to draw but didn't anymore. (My Dad even drew a bit in college, although I don't recall him drawing much in my lifetime. Let’s not speculate on that.) There are plenty of legitimate reasons artists have to stop creating. I have no intention to stop.

For me, painting was freedom and I loved it. I still do. These days I live and breathe art. I wake up to it every morning and yell at it to leave me alone at night so I can sleep. Back then it was hobby-like, but its importance grew. I’m so glad it did. Of course I wasn’t thinking of that when I started, it was just for fun back then.