PALO VERDE is a shocking tree, audacious, irresponsible event, with its use of color: bright spring green bark with even brighter yellow flowers. Cast against the neutral desert palette, the tree, especially in bloom, looks shockingly out of place. Late spring in the desert sees windstorms with clear skies, inviting the blooming palo verde’s thin branches to dance under the moonlight, a puddle of yellow flowers collecting by its base. My work is traditionally abstract, but with this piece, I experience it as representational. It is the closest I can get to capturing the essence of this tree in the desert, dropping it flowers in the wind, under the full moon.
If you follow me on Instagram, you know that my painting process is ritualistic. I had an interesting conversation with an aspiring artist yesterday, where I told her my career opened up once I started thinking of myself less as the controlling creator of my pieces and more as the channel through which a piece or creative idea expressed itself. Elizabeth Gilbert has a fantastic Ted Talk, “Your Elusive Creative Genius,” on this topic.
As part of this ritual, I often light palo santo. Palo, is spanish for stick or wood. Palo verde: green wood. Palo santo: saintly or holy wood. When I teach creativity, I encourage my students to utilize all their senses. We often think of creating as being dependent on touch and sight, but smell can be a powerful tool for shifting us into a creative mindset or mind space. We know this to be true - the smell of peppermint and tobacco might remind us of our grandfather or the scent of certain flower transports us back to a specific scene from our youth. Scent, can be used intentionally, too, to signal us in the here and now. Whether it’s a candle you light before you start journaling or a sacred incense before painting, the smell, if not the spirit, can cue to you into a different, desired state.
For the first time with SUMA PINTA, I’ve incorporated charcoal/literal smudges from these sacred plants — palo santo, copal, desert sage into my work. This was almost accidental but was also the exact right thing for this collection. A few weeks ago a composition called for black charcoal and I didn’t have any in the studio, and lo and behold, my stick of palo santo was sitting right there begging to be used. The charcoal left from a burnt palo santo is thick, soft, and heavy; it created a beautiful line that you can see in my SUNSET I and SUNSET II paintings.
When I was creating PALO VERDE AT NIGHT, IN THE WIND, I was working with incense from copal and an ember fell and started burning through the canvas without me realizing. I wish this was intentional, or that this accident led me to a beautiful insight but the truth is, it didn’t. It just happened and it just was. And now there is a tiny hole with accompanying burn mark, and the light charcoal from copal (which, unlike palo santo is a sap, not a wood) through which you can see the painting’s stretcher. A real fingerprint from the artist’s process.
PALO VERDE AT NIGHT, IN THE WIND is available for purchase via my website, alexmacedastudio.com. I’m also booking commissions for the rest of the summer or early fall, so if you’d like to work together on something special for your space, please reach out! 💓