From the Spring 2001 issue of ArtBeat

Dry Creek Artist Dana Hawley

(Chip) Roaming the hills surrounding Healdsburg I have twice encountered Dana painting. Lately I've seen her work at exhibits and found myself very drawn to it, particularly the landscapes, which, while remaining clear and accessibly representational, carry quite a charge of emotional energy as well.

Chip- How and when did your love painting begin?

Dana- I've loved making things since early childhood. At school I was happiest when engaged in art protects, though it wasn't until high school that I began to take it seriously, thanks to the influence of a thoughtful art teacher and to my father for taking me to galleries and encouraging my artistic impulses. My public high school in Marin offered drawing, painting, photography and filmmaking, and I took them all. I wish all our local public schools could emphasize art in the curriculum more than they do.

Chip-Yes. So, what apprenticeship did you follow after that?

Dana- At UC Davis I earned a degree in Biological Illustration. Then I stayed on and worked for the Educational Media Department and also did freelance illustration work. One job included drawing an extinct fossilized seedpod, the only one left in the world. I was terrified the whole time I had it under the microscope that I would sneeze and destroy it. After a two-year project consulting on a microbiology textbook, I knew this path was becoming too confining. I wanted more artistic freedom. While the scientific order did enhance my appreciation and understanding of the complexities of the natural world, I was still longing for something else.

In his teens my father attended and loved the San Francisco Art Institute. I felt like a cycle had completed when I first walked into the Art Institute 50 years later. I was fortunate to have Julius Hatofsky as my painting teacher his last year before retiring. Although my father died during the first couple of weeks I was there, and eventually- the commute and tuition became prohibitive, I truly loved the Art Institute. When I did stop attending there in 1996, I met Bill Wheeler, an artist from Occidental. He has been an extraordinary mentor. It was he who introduced me to plein air painting, and to the other members of what we called the "Northcoast Four": Linda Kammer, Hanya Popova Parker and Jocelyn Audette. Wheeler is still an important teacher for me. Artists need to nourish and support one another's work because it is fragile and can be lost as easily and as often as it is found.

Chip- When I visited your studio this morning it seemed clear tat you are drawn to your materials by a powerful love of the land.

Dana- Yes, nature is the material of my painting. The spirit of the land inspires me. What I paint and where I paint - anyone could do the same; it's not anything extraordinary. It's just that I take the time and energy to do it. In a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, I read about a meditation exercise where you lift a finger and point it at yourself, but then point it in the opposite direction and contemplate your bodily form being present in the trees and grass. I think when I'm outside painting in the wind and sunshine, observing the view for hours tie a time, I am, without consciously trying, practicing a similar meditation.

I believe that the beauty of the earth, with its web of life and elemental forces, exists on its own. The beauty is its own identity and is not dependent on anyone seeing, knowing, feeling, or communicating. In my work I search for a direct experience with the landscape and its inherent beauty.

Sometimes, due to my overthinking or getting too complacent, I have to create a breakthrough. I will turn the painting upside down or take it off the stretcher bars, or grab a stick to paint with, or use my left hand anything to break the comfort and make it new territory again. Not only is this exploring something within me; it's how I rekindle the creative flame over and over again, so I keep looking forward to going out to a new painting.

Planting my easel firmly in the ground, with head raised to wind and weather, I am immersed in nature. This process of painting within nature, quietly observing, is what I keep returning to. Painting, for me, is more a meditation than an intellectual or emotional release.

Chip- And yet I do find your paintings to be emotional. Perhaps by tuning the mind to the spirit of the land, the natural emotional energies of the body express themselves freely and clearly, without interference from the ego?

Dana- The rational controlling mind must let go for the soul to experience painting. As my mind quiets, I see the birds, the small animals and the individual species of plants. I see the habitats. The forms, shapes, and textures begin to play on the canvas. Layers intrigue me: the strata of paint, of work, of content, of color, all developing a kind of interlacing mystery.

Even though my intentions are to just paint the raw powerful beauty before me, I am still creating something from nothing. The vastness of the universe gets mirrored everywhere in the microcosm of its parts. The living parts of these microcosms are constantly in motion. By using my emotions to move my thoughts and by always standing at the easel so my body can feel motion, I begin the dance and dialog of a painting. I evoke the tension in the painting. The energy from the wind blows across the canvas and I move with it using my arm, the fulcrum my shoulder, as I lay in the large gestures. My emotions and will are essential to the painting process.

Sometimes when I'm painting I get into a flow where I feel I'm watching myself over my shoulder but that it's coming from somewhere else. I hear the thoughts "add orange" but I'm not trying to think them. These subconscious thoughts come from some inner place that is connected to a universal largeness. It's very subtle and present and cannot be forced. I'm concentrating only on what is before me, letting all other thoughts fall away.

Chip - We've talked a fair bit about landscapes, but you also paint and draw figures, and no doubt other art practices. What about them?

Dana - Yessiree. I paint and draw from a model at least once a week. This figurative art work is mostly watercolors and mixed media on paper. I love drawing the female form; it seems so familiar and natural, like I'm honoring my own body, my own femininity. Although most of my figurative work uses classical poses, academic traditional renderings don't interest me anymore. I'm searching for new combinations of materials to present the figure - searching for ways the figure can tell the viewer something about being human, about being a part of the human landscape. I also paint watercolor landscapes. Watercolors are easy to carry on trips or backpacking; they don't dry out so quickly. I love the transparency and freshness of the paint.

Chip - What tools do you use in painting?

Dana - My favorite is the palette knife. I can scoop up the paint and lay it on thick, then add more or scratch through. My strokes are like masculine versus feminine - I may use a restrained, violent stroke to put in a dark cloudy windy sky or a patch of tangled gnarly weeds, but I use a soft light touch to paint the baby lambs or the early morning light. Since I have to carry all my supplies to my painting site, I usually keep my tools limited and basic. I will often use my finger.

Chip - What artists have influenced you?

Dana - The first landscapes I really loved were Chinese silk paintings. While taking science classes at College of Marin, I met a teacher who offered me brush calligraphy lessons. I would go to the back of his Oriental Art History classroom and sit at a little table where he had me grind the ink, which took forever. I knew the practice of calligraphy was the art of coordinating mind, body and brush, but I didn't know it started with an hour of patient grinding! But while I sat there, through osmosis, I learned about the ancient Chinese landscapes: how the foreground was small in comparison to the background, and nature was always larger than man or anything manmade, and how the artists used aerial perspective without a vanishing point. I still love this approach to landscape versus the traditional western "foreground, middle ground, background with a vanishing point always on the horizon."

But the day I walked into the Tate Gallery in London and encountered the magnificent Turner landscapes with their rational compositional elements and then those divine, luminous, animated skies, I knew I wanted to try oils. Turner apparently believed sunlight, since it enables us to see yet was so capable of blinding us, was God. Another artist whose spiritual paintings influenced me was Emily Cart, a woman who painted by herself out in the Canadian backcountry during the early 1930s. She painted the forests with the reverence of cathedrals and the movement of life itself flowing through them. Emil Nolde's "tempestuous colours," William Blake's mysticism, Van Gogh's brushwork, Agnes Martin's introspection, Julius Hatofsky's expressionism and many, many more have all influenced me along the way.

Chip - What has it been like for you to bring your work to the public? What are the rewards and what are the costs?

Dana - Exhibiting my work has been hard for me. I guess it is because I like to please people and I know my work doesn't please everyone. I fed vulnerable. Maybe sometimes it's too raw or too bright or too myopic. But it is part of being a professional and I'm developing a thicker skin. I think my paintings have a handmade quality that speaks to viewers, especially when so much stuff is mass-produced and copied these days. Artists need money for their work, it is their life's work and it needs to be valued. Also, there is a rhythm to painting and showing, like being inward and quiet during the winter then going back out in spring to the community and participating, being lively. I really wish art could be given and received as gifts from one soul to another without putting a price on it, but I need to be practical, it's part of the delicate balance.

Chip - What are your artistic goals for the next few years?

Dana - I will be painting Mt. Tamalpais and places like the Bolinas Ridge and Mt. Vision for my next exhibit which will be a solo show in Fairfax, Marin County-. The Russian River is also on my mind. A series of the wild areas of the river painted from my canoe perhaps? The Northcoast Four has hired an agent to help us launch into new venues. Also, I'm thinking of exhibiting my nudes and possibly painting them in the landscape as a way to bridge the two directions I'm working on now. I would like my paintings to reach new collectors and be viewed and collected both locally and nationally so that I can continue painting and exploring my visual ideas with some financial security. The idea of having a studio where interested students could come paint with me has always been a goal. I love the idea of being able to give to the community without being a formal teacher. But for now, it's simply to paint.