Wednesday, February 11, 2009

A walk into the abstract

Magdalena artist finds inspiration in the desert

T.S. Last El Defensor Chieftain General Manager,tslast@dchieftain.com

Take a stroll around the Macey Center Art Gallery this month and walk in the shoes of Magdalena artist Estelle Roberge.

Roberge, whose abstract paintings and photographs are on display at Macey Center through Sunday, March 1, says that walking through nature is usually the first step in creating a painting.

"My work is tied into this walking thing," she says. "It's become very much a part of what I do."

Roberge says about three times a week she goes walking — about 45 minutes to an hour — into the Magdalena Mountains or areas off the road to Alamo and around Riley. She'll find a spot, and stop and observe.

"I sometimes notice things and study them long enough to have a memory of them and that would be my stepping stone into the painting," she said.

Roberge studies the texture, shape, form and composition of landscapes, rock formations and wildlife. She walks year-round to become acquainted with changes in color and what she describes as the "movement" in nature.

"It's important to see the whole place," she said.

Roberge, who is of French-Canadian decent, is a native of Maine where she initially got her training at the Portland School of Art and later at the University of Southern Maine. Her education gave her a strong foundation in drawing, painting, lithography and photography.

In 1992, Roberge headed West to find a teaching job; and she did at Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Ariz. After a year, she went back to school to earn a master's degree in fine art from Idaho State University.

"Then I realized that this is where I wanted to be — in this part of the country," says Roberge, who spent some time living and working in Utah and Arizona. She came to Magdalena in 2002, where she worked as an art teacher for the public school for a few years. She also spent a year teaching at Cottonwood Valley Charter School in Socorro.

Roberge moved to the West because of the allure of the desert. There was something she saw in the landscape and rock formations that reminded her of where she grew up in coastal Maine.

"I found that there were a lot of similarities between the desert and the ocean," she says. "The desert used to be ocean, and they share the qualities of vastness and solitude.

"The desert is seen as barren and a wasteland. To me, there's beauty. It's always changing. It's constantly becoming something else."

Roberge says she finds her walks in the desert personally nurturing. It is also where she finds her inspiration for her abstract oil, acrylic and multi-media paintings, most of them painted on 4-foot-square panels.

What she finds in nature, she says, "lends itself to abstract because it's always suggesting something."

In her artist's statement, Roberge writes: "Within the context of wilderness and humanness, these painting seek to place meaning on what I see as privilege. It is an inner meaning, which honors wildness, the mystery, the vastness, the matter and substance."

While Roberge has had her artwork displayed at numerous venues in Maine, Arizona and Utah, this is just her second show in New Mexico. And it's the first time her photographs, which capture abstract aspects she finds during her walks, have been displayed.

"I've always like to take photographs," she says, adding that it was part of her art training. "I don't work from them, but I reference them in finding something inspiring in the photograph."

The Macey Center Art Gallery is open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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