Old Spanish Trail Studio
Growing Up a Landscape Painter in West Texas
WHO AM I?
WHAT DO I DO??
A spirited elderly friend put much energy into mentoring me, long after she helped coax me through college. (Not to drop names, but the late Lucile Marquis was special not only to me, but to scores of Kappa Alpha Thetas who sought her counsel while attending Texas Tech.) Lucile once laughingly labeled me a true "Renaissance woman".
This, I realized, was my mentor's tactful way of saying I couldn't decide what I wanted to be when I grew up.
So for years, when asked What do you do? I'd try to discern the questioner's mindset. Then, helpfully, I'd give them what they wanted to hear.
"I'm a martial artist."
Truly. I hold a 4th degree black belt in taekwondo. I taught martial arts for nigh-onto 20 years, most of those as the co-owner of a family-oriented taekwondo studio in Lubbock, Texas.
The mind/body/spirit connection learned by practicing martial arts made me a better painter. The confidence of a martial artist makes me unusually thick-skinned for a creative soul, and after years of blocking kicks to my head, I'm never afraid to take risks with my art.
(Or is it because of all those kicks to the head that I'm so bold a painter now?)
Don't ask for a demonstration of my fighting prowess: I have one jump spin sidekick left in me, and I'm saving it for a very special moment.
"I'm a writer."
Seriously. I am. I've penned a novel, written stories for nieces and nephews. I'm writing to you right now.
I had to do something with that BA I earned in English (Texas Tech 1972). This, after I tossed my original studio art major into a bonfire of failed art classes. (Still sorry about that semester, Daddy.)
In retrospect, my change in majors was the gut reaction of a conservative Texas gal, a young-in-the-late-sixties representational artist surrounded by artsy types, many less enchanted by line and form than by psychedelic colors viewed through drug-enduced trances.(Call me 'square', but I didn't even smoke grass.) The English/Biology studies worked better for me. Of course, I've never used either to earn a living, and I know very little about formal art studies. (I can hear you laughing, Lucile...)
"I'm a pilot."
Retired pilot, actually. But the skies defined most of my adult life.
Immediately after marrying Jim, the world's
greatest guy, a jet pilot who I met at the airport, I inadvertently piloted a small plane through unmarked power lines mistakenly strung across the runway of an uncontrolled airport. I totaled a new little Piper, and it wasn't a great experience for a starry-eyed young newlywed, either. The near-fatal crash broke my back, concussed me bad enough to leave lingering memory problems, and in a shatter of glass, put my 25 year old face through the instrument panel.
Grounded, first by my injuries, then by life's normal demands, I immersed myself in homemaking and gardening. I took up taekwondo as therapy, flew when I could afford the rental fees, which was rarely.
Then one day, Jim needed a copilot, and soon, I was back in a cockpit fulltime.
We crewed a corporate jet together for almost two decades before hanging up our wings. (A good pilot plans her last flight.)
"I'm a landscape artist.
A Big Bend Artist."
No matter who else occupies my skin, I'm ultimately an artist. Always. And for the last decade or so, I've had the luxury of being a fulltime, professional artist who primarily paints Far West Texas. I'm a native Texan, and I'm a contemporary regionalist, a Big Bend artist.
I've done my share of portraits and wildlife; painted the southern Rockies all my life; penciled figures and nature drawings into dozens of sketchbooks. It's more fun to paint what I know best, so I focus on the wild, empty spaces and broad bold skies I call home.
I paint the farthest reaches of the southwest, views not everyone can access. I paint a land of extremes where blossoms hide thorns and parched deserts flash abundant color.
"I'm a wife, daughter, sister."
I'm also a native West Texan. My Texian kin harken back to Texas Revolution (1836) days. Some arrived on the Mayflower; if they'd known about Texas sooner, I suspect the first Thanksgiving would've been celebrated in Big Bend, not Plymouth. (Their loss.) Frontiers are in my genes, and after so many years in Midland and Lubbock, Texas dust is in my blood.
Mom,watercolorist Bettye Cook spent hours drawing with the preschool me while Daddy, Dave Cook coached Lubbock High's basketball team to a state championship.
Mom became the art director for Lubbock's NBC affliliate, and often took me to her studio, a creative wonderland for a small artist.
This genetic blend undoubtedly led to my eclectic life pursuits. My husband Jim has helped me pursue them.
Together, we worked hard and happily lived the American dream.
Avoiding all risk gets you nowhere but discontented and dissatisfied with your life, though.
Nearing retirement age, Jim and I opted out of security and comfort.
Call us crazy.
We quit good jobs, left a lovely, custom-built estate we'd landscaped ourselves, pecan tree by pecan tree over 26 years. We stored what we couldn't part with, then doled our belongings out to siblings and charities. And we drove away.
In a very adult sense, we ran off to join the circus. Had we not jumped off the edge of our secure known world, I could have never painted the places I've painted since that day.
Life is the sum of a lifetime of experiences. Today, as I paint towering cumulus building over the high desert, my mind weaves and banks around those jet-seared clouds. My silver-winged inner self skirts darkly turbulent chasms of a thunderstorm, dances through wispy feathers of cirrus, bursts into the deeply ultramarine blue sky at 41,000 feet.
The Texas sky has always defined me.
I'm a Big Bend artist. And I'm known for my skies.
About Jim:
Jim is 100% left-brained. I have a left brain, so we flew well together. He does not create. I know a piece is on track if he comes into the studio and says Man, I wouldn't have used blue there.
Having a life-partner who understands that sometimes an artist is incapable of logical speech is helpful. Having a mate who cheerfully cooks, then delivers a glass of wine to the studio and reminds one it's time to eat is priceless.
Jim's my best critic, my strongest supporter. He attempts to keep me honest to the details of my work, same as I kept him steady on the glide slope of an instrument approach.
We approach art as a crew.
We spend days--weeks-- out with our cameras, driving, hiking, dodging snakes and seeking the right light on whatever place. We explore each painting before I put it on canvas. We relive each place once it is framed and hanging.
Sometimes, I work on location.
More often, I work from several of my own photos, and many paintings are a combination of plein air painting followed by studio polish.
All my paintings reflect real Far West Texas landscapes. I depict the terrain accurately as my talents permit. I respect the land enough to render it true, so you can explore it through my paintings.
WHO NUDGED AND PUSHED & SHAPED ME INTO A PROFESSIONAL ARTIST?
Artist Bettye Cook, (known as "Mom") taught me to draw. And draw I did, effortlessly as I read. I drew on walls, on new mattresses, on clothes. I entered first grade overly proud that I could read, stunned that kids in my class didn't draw. Every morning for way too many years, Mom took the time to draw a cartoon on my brown lunch bag. (This is one of her watercolors.)
Baby sis Kathy came into my life, then begged me to draw her paper dolls. She liked my colored pencil creations better than "store-bought ones" and I'm a sucker for praise.
This makes Kat my first collector.Colored pencils are logical precursors to mastering pastel painting, btw.
Brother Kelly Cook, a prominent landscape architect in Midland, shares my creativity. There's no better guy to call when I seek artful business advice. He is also free with back slaps, helpfully urging me to pour single malt to celebrate finishing a painting.
Lee High School art teacher, Inez Parker assured me I was good enough to pursue a career in fine art. (Sometimes, you need someone to tell you such things. Thanks, Miss Parker.)
Lubbock artist Peggy Benton Young taught a weekly oil painting class targeted at mature, hobby level housewives. She entered my life when I was in my twenties, a college art program failure, a pilot recovering from a crash, a young woman going berserk from 2 years of enforced inactivity.
During each class, super-teacher Peggy veered off-lesson to give each student personal attention. Under Peggy Benton Young, I gained a basic knowledge of oil painting techniques and a profound, life-changing education in color theory, knowledge I constantly use.
Master pastelist Albert Handell has, since my first workshop with him in the early 1980s, periodically shared his bold command of value, shape and dynamic tension, elements that differentiate great from good compostions. He's likewise shared an intrinsic passion for creating. A couple of years ago, hanging and selling my own pastel landscapes at his home gallery, Ventana Fine Art on Santa Fe's Canyon Road gave me goosebumps.
In the only other workshop I've taken, New York artist/instructor, Ted Seth Jacobs explained the need to put chi, the life force into my drawings. (I recommend his book, DRAWING FROM THE LIGHT WITHIN as the single best book on drawing I've seen. Of course, Jacobs is a fellow black belt. We speak the same language.)
They say that when the student is ready, the instructor will appear.
Lacking a formal art education, I consider each of these talented teachers a great gift. Each special artist gifted me with exactly what I needed to learn. Each appeared in my life when I was most receptive to their instruction. Each taught me "to fish", to train myself, to boldly chose my own route as an artist.
Why Pastels?
Why Paint Desert Landscapes?
Pastels chose me. I love oils, but I define myself as a pastelist, one who works magic with sticks of pure pigment.
The same holds true of place. I love and paint other regions, rushing streams swarming with dragonflies and the like. But arid Far West Texas claims me as her bound apprentice. If my paintings are alive with magic, it's because I'm painting what I'm meant to paint.
What advice would you offer an artist just starting out?
There's more to life than painting. You must live to learn what you're meant paint.
I'm a Renissance woman.
I've collected the experiences live has offered me and I keep slowly weaving new ones into my soul.
I'm Lindy Cook Severns, a living Texas artist, Lucile.
And how wonderful that is.
WHERE'S HOME
& HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Jim flew jets out of Lubbock for 35 years. One day, infected with middle-aged crazy coupled with chronic wanderlust, we bought a big RV.
We sold the country club home we'd designed and lived in 26 years, packed up dog and parrot.
Together, we boldly set out to see America, but this time, via ground transportation.
It was a grand plan. We got as far as Fort Davis, Texas, a comfortable, familiar place we'd chosen as a locale in which to spend our first winter as nomads. I'd often painted the area. We'd vacationed there, visited Big Bend so often over our lifetimes, we figured no adjustment necessary.
There were adjustments. Living in a tiny tourist town is vastly different than being a city tourist there. Still, we enjoyed being hailed by name at the post office, welcomed at the adobe church we'd assumed was an abandoned, if historic building.
Somewhat appalled to learn how many material goods were unavailable in a small town 3 hours from the nearest city, (shoes come to mind) we were delighted to meet scores of intelligent, diverse people. We marveled at the potential paintings hidden off the beaten track.
True to our high adventure plan, we left for Canada that May. First stop: Taos, New Mexico. We'd originally planned to retire outside Taos, another longtime retreat of ours. But we missed West Texas.
Taos ended the beginning of our Great Escape. The parrot's passport didn't arrive in the mail. Gas prices skyrocketed. I'd left my pastels in storage. (Why ????) Call it artist's intuition, but our long-planned trip felt wrong.
We executed a one-eighty for Big Bend country.
We've lived more or less in the Davis Mountains ever since. There's still some wanderlust. We don't let grass grow too high under our tires, and I'm always ready to paint a new vista.
But we're rooted in Far West Texas, and most explorations are of our backyard, the one stretching northward from the Rio Grande.
We belong to Big Bend country, where skies are big and bold, where sunparched men still tip their cowboy hats to the ladies, and where I'll never run out of things to paint.
If you're interested in more of my ramblings and thoughts about life and painting around Big Bend country and parts west, read my blog:
WANDERINGS OF AN ARTIST IN FAR WEST TEXAS
LINDY COOK SEVERNS
BIG BEND ARTIST
PO Box 2167 Fort Davis, TX 79734
call for a studio tour when you're in the area!
806.789.6513
Lindy@LindyCSeverns.com