The Move

I am not the same artist who left Montana five months ago.

photo by Tabby Ivy

I haven’t painted in over six months. 

I knew in early 2023 that by the end of the year I would be leaving Montana, but I put off really thinking about it until August. Then I didn’t have a choice. I got back from my July trip to Norway and we put our house up for sale. It sold in less than forty-eight hours. My husband and I were faced with the reality of leaving the place we had called home for over thirty years. I actually was looking forward to the move that would take us closer to family, but not looking forward to the process of moving. It would prove to be more exhausting and emotionally difficult than I expected.

A big part of me, the artist part of me, was relegated to a back burner, abandoned and forgotten. The creative and quiet place that so nourishes my soul was forced to face to-do lists of thankless but necessary tasks for the move to a new home in Carlton, Oregon. The worst part was purging thirty years of long-forgotten “stuff” that had spread like mushrooms, taking up space in drawers, closets and garage shelves. I had to decide what was to be given away, thrown away, donated, or boxed and stored at a facility in Missoula until it could be delivered to Oregon. These tedious tasks required focused attention and hard physical work that sucked the energy from me. There was no room nor time for creative thinking, let alone painting.

After leaving Montana in late September, we were in a rental property in Mulino, Oregon for two months. While it was a lovely place, in the bucolic setting of a horse therapy ranch, it was not home. I felt in limbo and a bit unhinged. Everything seemed to be a bit off center. In December we finally moved into our new place in Carlton and our things that had been in storage arrived from Montana. 

Thirty years of life showed up in a truck. 

All that had been packed now had to be unpacked. And finding a place for everything was daunting. I tackled the kitchen first. Unwrapping dishes and far too many wine glasses produced mountains of paper. Fitting everything into fewer kitchen cabinets was a challenge. The rest of the house took even longer. In time, photos and my large collection of art books, fiction and non-fiction and cookbooks lined newly-built shelves in my “room of my own” library. Paintings were hung on freshly painted walls, and after a long lead time, new furniture joined old to fill rooms. A house gradually became home, and I would soon have a studio. 

My library. Photo by Tabby Ivy

At the moment the studio space is filled with moveable metal shelving, work tables, and boxes full of brushes, tubes of oil paint, watercolors, canvas panels and bottles of solvent, walnut oil and painting mediums. All are waiting to be unpacked and put to use. Other boxes contain binders of photos, drawings, notes and miscellaneous reference files. My easel stands ready to get to work, but am I? 

While I was AWOL from a studio, I kept my creative self fed by reading about other artists; Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Robert Ryman, Motherwell and Monet. A friend gave me the fabulous Manet/Degas book from the recent Met exhibition, and I reread portions of my cherished 1968 first printing of Henry Miller’s To Paint Is To Love Again. I also found connection hanging out with Agnes Martin in Arne Glimcher’s, Agnes Martin: Paintings, Writings, Remembrances. Arne was Agnes Martin’s close friend and art dealer for decades. The book includes reproductions of her hand written personal notes and correspondence. In one exchange she says to Glimcher, “We can see perfectly but we cannot do perfectly.” So true. Every artist struggles to be true to the intention of a work of art, and to convey on canvas that vision held within.

I recently made a trip to the Dick Blick Art Store in Portland for supplies. I felt the creative juices stirring as I walked the aisles. Tubes of Gamblin and Winsor & Newton oil paints called to me. Large canvas panels said “take me home, let’s make something together!” I could feel the painting I would make on its surface but I could not see it. I am ready to get to work, but unsure of what exactly that work will be. 

What I do know is that I am not the same artist who left Montana five months ago, and I think that is probably a good thing. While I haven’t been actually painting, I have been thinking about painting and how I will approach my practice once I am back in a studio. I am not so much envisioning a particular scene or subject as wanting to act on my instinct to somehow express more within my work. Be more authentic and immediate in what is said.

A local winery view. Photo by Tabby Ivy

This time away from my studio has been a challenge. Painting is therapeutic for me. It provides a form of communication and expression that I need. Henry Miller had this to say about what painting meant to him, “…it seems to me that if I had not discovered this outlet I would have gone insane.” I don’t know about going insane, but as someone who holds things inside, the ability to convey feelings through my art provides an outlet and satisfaction that is difficult to achieve otherwise. I am not a classically trained painter. I am self-taught, learning from studying the work of artists I admire and being true to my own voice. Often I have to screw things up a few times before the painting starts to make itself known. I know what I want to convey but not always how to get there. It’s not easy is it, Agnes? 

I embrace mistakes and the role of chance and spontaneity, which can reveal a truth hiding just out of sight. My best work seems to happen when I get out of the way and let things just happen. This is not unique to me of course. All artists know when they are tripping over themselves. Over the years I have settled on an approach to painting that has defined my practice. I move through the push and pull of applying paint to the canvas. I take chances, trusting my gut and intuition. I trust the subconscious to guide me through the painting process. Sometimes it is the undoing or scraping away of layers of paint that reveals what was there all along. I am very much an intuitive painter, and like all creative people, I need to be in the right place emotionally to be fully present when making art.

My new studio space is entirely different than what I had in Montana. In Montana I was in a separate building just outside our front door. It was originally built as a golf cart garage. It was fifteen feet or so square, filled with twenty years of creative memories and inspiration.  My new studio is a blank canvas, a void ready to be filled. It is also in a garage, in a smaller third bay attached to the house. We had a carpenter come in and build a wall to close off the area, add lighting, heating, more electric outlets and seal the floor. The ceilings are very high, the new wall was painted a neutral color, the other walls are white, but will be repainted in time. The space is oblong, 19 feet x 10 feet. A water heater stands guard in a corner. 

My new studio space. Photo by Tabby Ivy

In these months of transition I have experienced a roller coaster of emotions. While it has been a joy to be close to family and to explore the many wineries, restaurants, wine tasting rooms, and backroads of the beautiful Willamette Valley, I have had difficult moments. Some days I found it hard to find joy in anything. That scared me. I am usually a positive person. In the midst of moving, I lost my grounding. I found myself yearning not only for my studio and the emotional and creative outlet found through my work, but also missing the artist within me. After a tough six months, it is time to reconnect with her. 

I long to do as Agnes Martin did, when she would sit silently in her straight-backed chair in her studio and wait for inspiration to come. Agnes suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, though. Her practice was extremely disciplined and her ability to channel and convey emotion using hand painted grids on canvas was unique to her. I don’t think sitting in a chair for hours waiting for inspiration to hit is necessarily for me, but I am aware of a new calling beaconing me, and I want to explore it. My problem is that my studio feels foreign to me right now. Years ago I got one of those gongs that are used to clear or remove negative or stagnant energy from a space. It is large and heavy and impressively loud. You can physically feel the strong vibration of sound fill a space when struck. I will give that a try. Change the energy of the water heater.

Starting to feel like my space. Photo by Tabby Ivy

So, am I ready to paint? Yes. I have a studio. I have all my supplies. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, my artistic journey led me to a fork in the road and I took it. Will I now be able to set free what has been building inside me these past months?  I hope so. I do know it’s time for me to show up and to be open to whatever message Inspiration sends to me.

Like Agnes I will quietly wait and listen. 

Let’s hope I hear it when it speaks.

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After over thirty years in Montana, contemporary painter Tabby Ivy now lives and works in Carlton, Oregon. Painting came late in her life. Her home studio is a sanctuary for working, and reading her extensive collection of art books. Learn more at www.tabbyivy.com.

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Now available! The second printing of "Between Artists, Life in Paintings and Prose", by Damon Falke and Tabby Ivy.

Juke contributors Damon Falke and Tabby Ivy worked for over three years in collaboration on this beautiful body of work. The first printing sold out during their 2022 exhibition at the Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell, Montana. The book can be purchased at www.tabbyivy.com/books

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