Albuquerque in October

on painting and palettes as portals to imagination and safety

When I painted ROOTS I & II, back in 2019 and 2020, I wanted to pay homage to the duality of having familial roots in the Northeast and having my sense of identity and the origins of my creative voice rooted in the Southwest where I was raised. I’m a Texas native, San Antonio born and—at times—raised. 

ROOTS I, house paint, acrylic, graphite on plywood

My father was in the Air Force, and aside from an assignment to Alaska when I was three, we lived on and around military bases in New Mexico and Texas. My father’s main hobby during those years was showing dogs competitively, so I spent many hours in our van as a child taking trips to various towns and cities in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado. 

Texas—with all its strengths and faults—is imprinted in my DNA and upon my consciousness forever. My relationship to Texas and the Southwest mirrors the complexity of what my home life was like during those years: it’s complicated. The beauty and energy of the land that I feel such a deep, abiding love for and connection to stands in stark contrast to the memories I hold of the violence and abuse I lived under then. Even the harshest of memories that surface these days have a softness at its edge. All of them—the good and the bad—oscillate in my mind’s eye between vibrancy and pain, fear and freedom, music and silence, daydreams and nightmares, bliss and horror. I spent the most unsettling years of my life in the Southwest, yet now at age 38, I find myself yearning to return to it and finding comfort in the magic I experienced while living there. 

Talk about cognitive dissonance. 

ROOTS II, acrylic, acrylic skin, fabric, house paint on raw canvas

I’ve been navigating and parsing this duality since I painted those works two years ago. The opportunity to create them arrived during a period when I started a deep dive into inner child work, specifically as I was focusing on letting 6- to 10-year-old A’Driane know that we are safe and that she can finally speak. My intent was to give myself space in the studio to express the words, emotions, thoughts, and even physical movements I couldn’t as a young child. With this as my intention, I expected all of these things to be released through my work in a very clear, direct manner—in concept, form, and mark on the canvas. What I didn’t anticipate was that I’d start by processing memories from this time period primarily through color. 

I guess I should have anticipated it though; as a child, I was enamored with the colors of the sky and land that surrounded me. As we traveled from state to state in the region, I’d stare out the window in awe, my imagination creating its own visual stories with the colors of the shifting landscape as the backdrop. Those reds, browns, pinks, blues, oranges, purples, and dusty, sandy hues of the deserts, valleys, vegetation, and terrain brought me comfort, peace, and groundedness back then. They also planted in me a sense of wonderment, magic, and expansiveness I didn’t realize I was subconsciously longing for until they started showing up in the color palettes of my work. 

In my first six years of painting, I was drawn to bright, bold shades of varying colors. I didn’t really mix colors unless I was blending them together on the canvas while painting. (To be honest, I still don’t do much color mixing beforehand.) Over the last two years, however, early childhood memories appear in softer, muted tones and richer hues that mimic the colors of the landscape I was immersed in. 

Las Cruces, acrylic and house paint on canvas

Red Oxide. Yellow Ochre. Sandbank. Anthraquinone Blue. Burnt Sienna. Titan Buff. Titan Mars Pale. Light Portrait Pink. Light Apricot. Venetian Red. Indian Yellow Hue. Mars Black. Baked Clay. Atmospheric. Breathless. Sangria. Azurite Hue. Mars Orange. Yellow Oxide. Teal. Naples Yellow. Blue Red Deep. Celadon. Raw Sienna. Dioxazine Purple. 

As I rub the colors on my hands or brush them across a canvas, the movement and sensory input transport me back to who I was and what filled me with joy I hid deep within my body out of fear. Albuquerque in October was my favorite time of year and is a season that remains imprinted upon my subconscious all these years later. I remember the excitement of running out to the playground with my classmates and teachers in October to try and count what seemed like thousands of hot air balloons dotting the midmorning sky with their bright colors. It was a visually mesmerizing sight that filled me with wonderment from my toes to the tips of my ponytails. 

I also remember sitting very still in the back of the car but straining my eyes to look out the window and take in all the balloons in the distance. The car window back then was a portal for my imagination and watching those hot air balloons as they burned color into the sky made it easier for me to envision myself floating away in one towards freedom; I’d picture myself in the basket, warming myself on the heat of the flame, my eyes fixed on the horizon in front of me. Looking out the window and up at the sky while in the car was like looking into a portal of another world I wanted to belong to. When paired with the mountains, clay-colored stucco buildings, deep blue sky, hot pink and orange sunrises, green cacti and yucca flowers, and sandy-colored ground, the festive colors of the balloons painted enrapturing visuals that were a sensory relief from my reality. 

Albuquerque in October, acrylic, acrylic skin, house paint, canvas on canvas

As I take in the work I’ve made over the last two years, I can see how this shift in my color palette has acted as both a channel and healing salve as I engage in deeper work to heal wounds from childhood. The marks and brushstrokes in every piece definitely depict my mental and emotional state as I navigated my inner and outer worlds back then, but the colors are a reminder of what preserved parts of me that are now fully alive today. 

The power and magic of the Southwest hold me together just as much now as it did then.