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Color, Depth, Fusion and Flow
Aleta Pippin creates expressively wordless
worlds in abstract art
by Gussie Fauntleroy
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Reprinted from FOCUS/Santa Fe - New Mexico,
October/December 2007 |
A Distant View, oil on canvas, 36"x50" |
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"I paint feeling rather than content; I paint the way the rose smells, rather
than the way it looks." This is how Aleta Pippin sums up her approach to the
canvas, adding that other influences - the clear Southwest light and the
particular music playing as she paints, for example - also meld into the
intuitive, nonlinear process that becomes her art.
"I think it's really about paying attention, it's really introspection, not
about what I'm doing on the surface. I think wherever you are in your life, that
flows through onto the canvas, whether you're aware of it or not," the artist
explains, leading the way across a small courtyard to the studio at her eastside
Santa Fe home. In the light-filled space, paintings in various stages of
completion present a richly hued universe of inviting, wordless depths. It's the
passionate visual language that Pippin has pursued for a number of years, once
she settled into a medium and style - after finally setting into art as her
chosen path.
Long before introspection took on visual form, Pippin's restless self-reflection
meant trying on various life-choice hats to see which felt and fit the best.
First, after growing up in a California desert town near Palm Springs, came
marriage, making a living, and kids. Later Pippin joined second husband Corky
Weaver in his Houston-based oil and gas exploration firm. In 1984 she opened her
own company, expanding her executive suite business until it was named one of
Houston's top 50 women-owned firms.
With a do-it-now personality, multifaceted skills, and the world as a buffet,
Pippin persuaded Weaver to relocate several times over the years - to Santa Fe
in 1991, then California, Las Vegas, NV, and finally back to Santa Fe - as she
sought a fulfilling channel for her creative and spiritual drive. She studied
for the ministry in Unity Church (but didn't follow through with it), joined the
National Speakers' Association, and wrote inspirational books. She took painting
courses, reconnecting with a childhood love of drawing and art. She replaced
painting with other pursuits for a few years and eventually circled back to it.
In 2003 Aleta and Corky returned to Santa Fe, where the artist's daughter and
her family live. Yet even after a four-year hiatus from painting, Pippin
realized she was returning to the canvas with a higher level of visual awareness
and education than when she'd left. "I knew more because I'd been looking at
art, studying it, and fine-tuning my personal taste," she relates.
Pippin teamed up with fellow artist Barbara Meikle in August 2006 to open Pippin
Meikle Fine Art, just off Santa Fe's storied Canyon Road. The pair had become
friends while both were involved with the Santa Fe Society of Artists and
Artistas de Santa Fe Gallery. "We were selling at Fiesta's Labor Day show
downtown and I said: You and me on Canyon Road - that's where we're going,"
Pippin recalls. Before long they found the ideal spot, on Delgado Street at the
corner of Canyon Road and began representing several other artists as well.
"Barbara and I are like-minded with the business aspects, and visually our art
complements each other," Pippin observes. "The gallery seemed like the next
natural thing."
Pippin also switched from acrylics to oils, drawn to the medium's sumptuous
colors and its ability to convey depth through layers of thin glazes, even as
the surface texture remains smooth. Her often large-scale works invite the
viewer to enter a world of multi-hued emotion, whose wordless dramatic arc can
be both subtle and intense. "I paint intuitively. I start by simply applying
paint - I seem to have a favorite palette these days, of warm colors," the
artist explains. " like creating a joyful, up-lifting feeling and I often get
that comment from people who are not normally attracted to abstract art, but who
like my work."
Pippin applies paint with a palette knife, often wet on wet, infusing the
process with more direct control than her previous poured-on style in acrylics.
Yet total control is neither possible nor a goal. "The more you do it the more
you understand the potential of what may happen, but there are still things that
happen so beautifully and you're not physically controlling it," she notes. "You
set up opportunities for these events to happen, which is how serendipity
works." One vital element in the equation, of course, is the spirit of the
artist herself. "I feel joyful. I appreciate the wonder and awe of life," she
points out, "and that's reflected in my art."
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Walk With Me
oil on canvas
48" x 30"
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