DAAG: INTERVIEWS: BETSY LOMBARD

Yes. I was born in Whittier, and we also lived in various places throughout California. My favorite place was Visalia because it was more rural. I went horseback riding through the grape vineyards, cotton fields and orange groves. Three Rivers, in the Sierra Nevada, was only a half hour away. I've also lived in Lake Tahoe, Cape Cod, and Caspar, near Mendocino. I spent 20 years on Fifth Avenue on the Oakland waterfront in a warehouse community. I currently reside in Nevada City, California. I have also spent a lot of time in Mexico.

I suppose basking in such a natural, rural environment would influence your approach to art, wouldn't it? In what way might this influence have shaped the way you paint or see what you paint?

Being outdoors, I feel nature's poetry from all sources. I've literally felt granite rocks pulling stress out of my body. A smooth breeze, the sound of a river or creek, a gorgeous dragonfly, or even just looking over at my friend while we are painting together and feeling the blessing of their friendship. Painting plein air I've literally noticed that sometimes I'll think, "this is a lackluster subject," at first, and then by the simple act of standing there for several hours it's like it opens up. Literally, anything could be a subject.

34 years. The only time I stopped was when I was about 20, living in San Francisco, and I was not too happy about the way my life was going. Then I moved to Mendocino, actually Caspar, Ca. and started painting in watercolors, and selling. I showed my work at what was then the Seagull Gallery and at a local breakfast café called Egghead Omelettes. I gave a yard sale on the front porch of the Caspar Inn and sold enough work to go to Europe for five months.

I spent time in England, and hitchhiked to Scotland. Later I made my way to France and Switzerland, where I did the grape harvest to earn money to continue my trip. I then took the train to Greece where I was able to stay several months. I was painting in watercolor in a spare, zen style, leaving a lot of white and that perfectly suited the white plaster buildings on the Greek Islands and the accents of colored window frames or flowers, and the brilliant blue sky and sea.

Practically speaking, none. I consider myself self-taught. But I did take one painting class with Bruce McGaw at San Francisco Art Institute during the late 1970s. Abstract Expressionism was in vogue and I did not want to paint in that style.

My mother frequently took me to the L.A. Art Museum and the Laguna Art Festival. She bought me books on the impressionists and Chagall.

Partly, but I also had a very good art teacher in high school, Mrs. Lancombe, and I took private art lessons off and on from the age of twelve. I also took a wonderful "Anatomy for the Artist" class at Laney College in Oakland. We worked from skeletons, then later live models. The class was taught by a biology teacher. I also hosted life drawing sessions at my studio in Oakland, and this year I began teaching plein air painting.

Selden Gile of the Society of Six, Franz Marc, Matisse, Kandinsky, as well as all of my closest artist friends: Anne Austin, Benito Trujillo, Christine Brisley, Cianne Fragione, Carol Kerner, Nikki Bengal, Spencer Chen, Julie Dunger. When I paint with or near another artist, it's like DNA jumps off of the other artist and onto me and vice versa. I'll find myself drawing a line the way Anne would or flinging paint enthusiastically onto the canvas like Beni or Cianne.

I don't think there are any hard and fast rules in art. However, it's certainly something I enjoy. But I do think I spend more time painting alone. I feel at times it's easier to gain access to a deeper, or at least, different type of intuition when I'm alone.

I like Marc's Blaue Reiter paintings because of the way he simplified geometry found in nature; Matisse for color and composition and flattening of the subject into abstraction; Kandinsky - that geometry thing again. The Society of Six for their vivid plein air works, roughness and devotion to nature, and their relative disregard for success, sales, or public opinion; Ray Jackson of Walnut Creek for the way he paints thickly on top of another painting leaving some of it showing underneath.

I have seen artists do something like what you've just described (painting on top of another painting leaving some of it showing underneath). It takes great skill to be able to do this tastefully, I think. Do you do this, too?

Yes, I've been doing it for some time. I like the idea that there's no such thing as a bad painting, because it could be a great underpainting.

It varies. Sometimes I will begin with charcoal, making a drawing and smoothing the lines with a rag wet in Gamsol. Then I'll fix it with fixatif so it won't smear with the paint colors that will be applied later. Other times I'll draw with paint in colors similar to the masses to be painted. Sometimes, plein air, I like to not draw at all and just use masses.

I've done lots of figures, florals and still lifes, too, as well as industrial urban landscapes when I lived in Oakland. My current focus on landscape may be because it seems easier to feel contact with God, or intuition, when one is outside in nature.

One November day this year I went out painting in Nevada City. I was dressed in layers, because the weather in November is very changeable. The sun came out and soon I peeled down to a tank top and bare feet. Then within an hour, it clouded over and got very windy. I suited up in a sweater, parka, hat, muffler and ratty wool fingerless gloves. The beautifully colored leaves were blowing off the trees and I felt like I was watching the stunning fall unravel before my very eyes. I stayed until late in the day and towards twilight the sky turned lavender and I put that in my painting as a complement to the reds, yellows and greens in my piece.

I have been slowly developing a body of abstract work. At first they are derivative of landscape but I feel that as they evolve they'll be purely products of intuition. Intuition is my guide in painting, whether realistic or not. I feel that as I get older my intuition is getting stronger.

The abstracts are kind of about extracting geometry from nature, expressing the cadence and movement that is there. My inspiration for them started with my fascination with palm trees, their interlocking curves, their strength and grace, the "fabric" that grows as part of their trunks, the rhythm that happens when the wind blows their complex fronds.

I like the analogy you make when you say that it is easier to feel contact with God when plein air painting. What you are saying, I think, is that nature can be awesome, breathless, and totally beyond descriptive beauty. What do you try to capture on your canvas when outdoors?

I believe there is a higher power of some kind, but that it is not possible for us to define it. In fact, that's the whole beauty of it. The mystery. It could be as simple as electrons.

To take the awesomeness of the experience of painting outdoors further, I am reminded that one day painters will be standing on the Moon or Mars and painting what they see. Have you ever thought of such things?

Wind. Cold. The light changing. Although that last one is kind of a joke for me because I don't work so realistically that it's a big deal. In fact, many times it enhances my experience, like with the lavender sky.

When I paint plein air, I feel that I usually deal with the colors I see. But in the studio, sure. Also in the abstracts, of course, and I have done some works I consider in the fauvist vein. I did a series of red palms, where the sky was brilliant red and the palms were done loosely in mauves, golds, light greens, and metallics.

Oil. I used to work in pastel and watercolor, but I feel that the glass in front of them is a real distraction to seeing the work. Oils are brilliant and rich and sensual. When I go into the studio to paint, the first contact of the knife with the paint already begins to make my stress melt away.

Permalba white, cadmium yellow light, transparent orange and earth yellow, cadmium red light, alizarin crimson, permanent rose, venetian red, magenta, dioxazine purple, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, prussian blue, sap green, thalo green yellow shade, raw umber. I might leave a few of those out when I paint plein air. I prefer Gamblin colors for their transparent shades. I use disposable palettes and those Masterson tupperwares to keep the fumes in my studio down. Also, I use a quality European garbage can with a step-lid for the same reason. When I am working large I might use two or three of those palettes at the same time. I don't like to feel cramped.

Right now I am enjoying working 36" X 46" but I do work all the way down to 7" X 7" works on panel.. When I paint plein air I work 24" X 18."

I like to work on linen but it's doubled in price in the last few years so I use cotton and stain it before I start. I don't like to work on a white ground.

With respect to myself, there are too many variables to consider in order to give a fair answer to that question. For example, I've been living in Nevada City for about a year and left an established clientele in the Bay Area. There are more buyers in the Bay area than there are in Nevada city. Naturally I would expect to sell less here. In general, though, I would think it more difficult selling art in today's economic environment, yes.

First, I don't know that to be true. Speaking for myself, from the age of twelve I knew I wanted to be an artist and I was given the support for that path by my parents, June and Jerry Lombard.

Could it be that today men aren't as encouraged in the arts because artistic endeavors are perceived as more feminine? I'd prefer to be recognized for my work on its own merits rather than be considered a woman artist.