A painting, in my mind, begs both an internal viewer (that would be me, the artist/creator) and an external viewer (that would be you, the critic/admirer, a busy person who thankfully bothers to pause when they encounter fine art).  I paint for myself, but it pleases me just silly to show my work to you.

Now, in my mind, any viewer is a good viewer. People's taste in art varies so much, a given work of art will reach some viewers, repel others and leave the majority walking away in kind indifference. People have preferences, which keeps life interesting.  Even within the small circle of folks who collect my art I see preferences. Animals or no animals. Cloudy or clear sky. A familiar mountain or a shadowy valley. A favorite season. Blues or reds. Sizes. Shapes. Price ranges. Frames.

I'd go crazy if I thought about all that before I started a painting. Way too analytical for me. Since I'm my first viewer, I start by choosing a subject emotionally.  A scene must speak to me or there's little chance it will speak to you. I start with a gut feeling, which leaves me a Texas-sized choice about what to paint next.  Because of this, I consider it a luxury to know my audience before I start a painting.

The Museum of the Big Bend's annual western art and cowboy gear show in Alpine, Texas offers a custom-made audience. Trappings of Texas is an invitational show. It expects its invited artists to exhibit new work within tightly fenced boundaries.  Art must be either (1) authentic cowboy art (working cowboys doing cowboy things) or (2) traditional landscapes of Big Bend country. Each lucky artist knows precisely what the people who buy tickets to the buyers' preview party or folks who wander into the museum to view the two-month long show want to see. And who they want to see it from.

Tempting as it is to revert to my pencil drawing roots and shoot off a finely detailed cowboy figure, or to paint my friends Bill Max roping or Tom in the smoky cloud of branding, I leave that to the real cowboys who paint real cowboys, like my talented neighbor Wayne Baize. I live on a ranch, but I'm not a cowboy. I've been inducted into the small circle of Trappings artists because I paint the land of Far West Texas, where cowboys do their cowboy things. I can draw cowboys, sure, but on my own time. Trappings gives me the privilege of capturing the rapidly vanishing landscape those cowboys ride.  Done correctly, it's a big job, and a worthy one.

I get to enter three paintings, plus another that I donate to the live auction. I don't believe in hanging paintings together without a plan. This year, I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to paint. Before selecting this year's subjects, I imagined all this historic ranchland covered (shudder) with subdivisions and condos and pavement. And, with people. What intangibles would be lost, if that happened? What of the cowboy's world do I have a chance to preserve on canvas?  I have the audience. The responsibility is mine. I don't want to disappoint by painting the wrong things.

It's easy to paint beauty, but it isn't only the beauty out here that begs to be painted. There's the vastness of this country, the stark isolation and aloneness of spirit that both haunts and comforts. There's the big sky that covers a cowboy like the dusty hat he's never without. The subtle thorns. The deep shadows. The promise and mystery of danger and of distant horizons.

My husband likes to say, "To experience this country, you have to get off the pavement."  That's where I chose to go with my first and largest Trappings painting.

We drove through Marfa and headed south, where the rocky peaks and volcanic outcroppings of the mountains melt into rolling grassland as far as the eye can see.  Walk a few feet in any direction, turn, spin under the bluest of skies: You see no houses, no automobiles, no man-made structures save a few weeping strands of barbed wire strung between crooked posts. Stand there for hours, days even, and nothing changes but the sky and the shadows. You have the sense of being alone with God, responsible for yourself and nothing more. And nothing less. The cowboy myth isn't a myth out here in Big Bend country. It's a fact.
And now, it's a painting.



"MILES AND MILES OF TEXAS"
14" x 18" pastel on Wallis museum-grade paper
by Lindy C Severns copyright 2008

$2500 professionally framed under museum glass

see this painting during TRAPPINGS OF TEXAS 2009  at the Museum of the Big Bend  Alpine, TX

Buyers Party Fri. Feb. 27th 6 pm (for ticket information, please contact the museum  ejackson@sulross.edu
Live Auction  Sat. Feb 28th 10 am
The show will open Saturday Feb. 28 and run through April 26 2009

Go to my website for more information about Trappings and other exhibits. As I did this painting, I realized it begged to be done on a larger scale, That second piece, at 28" x 36", is titled "The Road Less Traveled" and is offered at Kiowa Gallery (kiowagallery@sbcglobal.net)  And check back soon for the stories of my other three Trappings of Texas paintings.