The following portfolios are various figurative and personal responses to place in the Four Corners region where I relocated in 1992. It is crossed with boundaries - personal, tribal, political and government, and embedded with conflicts about race, gender, professional and economic pursuits.
All I knew of myself when I arrived is shown in the series titled Six Women completed just prior to my decision to come to Cortez. There is much to interpret in the large paintings. Simultaneously, I created four large figurative images about the relationship between land, the cosmos and human beings. We are of it, I told myself. When I arrived in Cortez a Navajo/Russian professor of botany bought all four. He later traded one back with me for a large landscape about canyon willow and snow. I keep the one he traded back in my personal collection as a reminder that people who like an artist's work are changlings, too; their interest is present tense; active, positive and engaged in a relationship to our images, not just the artist.
The narratives in the following selected works show conflicting life and death impulses - the urge to change, accept healing, recreate life, show danger when it exists. Soon after I arrived the subject of deep loss emerged reflecting questionable identity with the familial, presumed safety of the community I left behind. The images grew from my need to work through fifty years of cultural indoctrination and the domination of preoccupied, self-centered urban lifestyle.
Some description accompany the selected work that follows here.
All I knew of myself when I arrived is shown in the series titled Six Women completed just prior to my decision to come to Cortez. There is much to interpret in the large paintings. Simultaneously, I created four large figurative images about the relationship between land, the cosmos and human beings. We are of it, I told myself. When I arrived in Cortez a Navajo/Russian professor of botany bought all four. He later traded one back with me for a large landscape about canyon willow and snow. I keep the one he traded back in my personal collection as a reminder that people who like an artist's work are changlings, too; their interest is present tense; active, positive and engaged in a relationship to our images, not just the artist.
The narratives in the following selected works show conflicting life and death impulses - the urge to change, accept healing, recreate life, show danger when it exists. Soon after I arrived the subject of deep loss emerged reflecting questionable identity with the familial, presumed safety of the community I left behind. The images grew from my need to work through fifty years of cultural indoctrination and the domination of preoccupied, self-centered urban lifestyle.
Some description accompany the selected work that follows here.
The Benevolence of Our Pond
Sonja Horoshko
Oil on Canvas 54" X 54"
The last painting in a series of twelve + one;
a consistent study of the
death & resurrection of my muse.
Private Collection, Palm Beach, FL
copyright 2012 USA all rights reserved
Top and bottom
The Death of the Muse Cycles
7 of 12, oil and hand-made willow charcoal
on Arches and Canvas. All 54" x 54"
Works reside in
San Francisco, CA., Evergreen Colo., Palm Beach FL
Searching, identifying and finding support,
healing in community over twenty five years.
Below
Feeding the Death of the Muse Cycle.
Studies of Loss - Ceremonial Auto Portraits
All 15 " X 15", oil on Arches, 3/8 small studies
The painting below shows the land I call
home, the place where I began
the expressive process shown
in the Death of the Muse series above.
Spring Beanfields, Sonja Horoshko
Looking south to the chest and head of the Sleeping Ute Mountain
Oil over acrylic on Canvas . 60" X 72"
Dr. Carolyn Johnson Collection
copyright 2012 USA all rights reserved
SIX WOMEN
The portfolio shows the transition from my
life prior to arriving in the Four Corners.
Draw what conclusions you want.
You are probably accurate in assessing that
the landbase, earth and all its wondrous life,
is crossing, absorbing, saturating my
flattened body, pushing me to consciousness.
All 48" X 48" acrylic on canvas.
Mt. Wilson in my Belly
Before I Crossed Mt. Wilson
The seventh and final self-portrait in the
SIX WOMEN portfolio painted during my
many trips crossing the Rocky Mountains
to my home in the High Desertlands.
48" X 48", acrylic on canvas
Below
My Four Santos
The spiritual scraps
of my transition to rural experience.
Navigation. Trapeze. Upcycle. Fashion.
