natural wonder

STORY
CAROLYN FARB

PHOTOGRAPHY
HALL PUCKET

MY first meeting with Dixie Friend Gay was in 1989 at Houston's Lawndale Annex, where she had donated an icon painting of the Greek god Pan for an auction. Since then, she's shown in points from Corpus Christi and Beaumont to Amarillo and Abilene, getting picked up by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and The Barrett Collection in Dallas along the journey.
This fall she joined an impressive roster of emerging national artists for Austin's ArtHouse at the Jones Center's 19th annual juried exhibition New American Talent. Each work was hand-selected by Jerry Saltz, senior art critic for The Village Voice, and the statewide tour continues through June 2006.
I have followed her career on its trek and continue to watch her artistic detours - public and private masterpieces, sculpture and paintings - all crafted from her lush Houston studio, a work of art in and of itself

CF: Did your upbringing on an isolated ranch in western Oklahoma influence your art?
DFG: It influenced the way I approach life. We didn't have anybody to do anything for us, so we learned how to do everything ourselves. You become self-reliant.

CF: I-low does your creative life in Texas compare with your time in New York?
DFG: I was really surprised when I came to Houston. The art scene was in the East Village in the '80s. People are very accessible. There's a good base collectors, and it's easier to meet people in the art community here in Houston.

CF: From where do you draw inspiration?

LEFT: ENTANGLED CELERITY, 2004, ACRYLIC ON LINEN. RIGHT: DIXIE FRIEND GAY IN FRONT OF BRAZOS APRIL, 2003, ACRYLIC ON LINEN.

DFG: All my work is nature-based. It's about the altered state of consciousness. We were wilderness creatures at one time. That memory is in our cells to connect with the oneness that we feel with nature and is unifying for us as mammals.

CF: In the early '90s, you created fiberglass female and male chrysalises sometimes draped in gauze. What did these faceless figures represent?
DFG: The chrysalis is the fragile translucent cocoon left behind as the butterfly leaves. What if we could shed skin, come out and be born anew? The chrysalises were pieces of hope and moving on - a rejuvenation.

CF: What does painting represent to you?
DFG: It is the ecstasy of building a relationship through private conversations and then, as the final varnish is applied, disentanglement. What always follows is the anticipation of the next new liason that will be better than any before, perfect, pure and so alluring. Perhaps this coming together and letting go is universal to the creative process.

CF: How do you get motivated?
DFG: I don't have to get psyched up to paint, but psyched down to make sure the kids have food to eat and stuff like that. I have trouble leaving the studio, because I enjoy it so much. I feel like the luckiest person in the world that I can just go in there and paint.

CF: In 1998, you received the commission for Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport. How did that come about?
DFG: In 1995, I decided I wanted to do public projects in mosaics. I started researching glass and learning the craft of the material. Around 50 artists submitted ideas and seven were selected. I explored several ideas and settled on the idea of the bayou since Houston is called the Bayou City. I was going to do trees that grew along the bayou, but as I started kayaking and taking photographs, I ended up incorporating a lot of in-your-face imagery of creatures, and the trees became secondary. I put 40 bronze castings of mud puppies, lizards, alligators and fish in the floor.

CF: Do your latest paintings in the Velocity series say something different?
DFG: Those are the ones without subject matter. Velocity is about the energy when you're looking at them. It's about real time as opposed to past time.

CF: Your works about nature arc almost painted with a photographic accuracy.
DFG: When you get up close to them, they are totally fragmented. Up close all you see is squibbles and dabs of paint.

CF: Where is your focus now?
DFG: I'm working on a project for the waterway close to the Town Center in the Woodlands. Another is for the business

"I HAVEN'T EXHAUSTED EVERYWHERE I WANT TO GO WITH THE VELOCITY PAINTINGS. IT'S SO NEW. THIS HAS BEEN A JUMP - BREAKTHROUGHS DON'T COME THAT OFTEN."-DIXIE FRIEND GAY

school at Rice University. The working title is Historic Houston. It's about the swamps.  I did my research in the new swamp area at the Arboretum.  I used to sketch directly from nature.  Now the digital camera, PhotoShop and the digital projector are the tools that provide templates for my paintings.
My photographs are okay, but what I love about my new paintings is that there is a physicality or obsessiveness about them. I haven't exhausted everywhere I want to go with the Velocity paintings. It's so new.  This has been a jump - breakthroughs don't come that often.

Dixie Friend Gay Studio, 1901 W 14th Street, Houston, 713.868.7435; www.dixiefriendgay.com.