As I have matured over the years as an artist and creative person I have also developed an interest in the psyche as it colligates to this creative process. My introduction as a young college student to the work of C.G. Jung as I perused the book Man and His Symbols would begin a life-long interest in the psyche and it’s connection with what I conjectured in my finals paper for the Union Institute and University as the Artist Archetype. I look back on it as a blessing now that I was unable to finish college as a youth. Circumstance made me delay this until I was in my sixties after many years of independent study. I had time to formulate my thoughts. Even now I do not have a grasp on all of this, but now I understand I must continue to ask the right questions of the oracle!
Unable to articulate thoughts about “making things” as a young girl was a frustration for me, but encouragement by my very bright Mother to use my mind and learn constantly as she did, herself, gave me a rich background for the hours I spent lost in right-brain, creative activities. Something was always churning away as the left-brain impatiently paced in the background while my youthful ego pushed it aside and commenced my “work” as a young “artist”. My Mother's hunger for knowledge was not totally satisfied with her stenographer's degree from Barns Business School in Denver. She also never pursued her budding musical career as an accompanist in her Father's dance band. I'm sure keeping me occupied in creating, learning and loving music was greatly influenced by her even though it was never articulated except through acceptance. Her family were immigrants from Finland some of whom were intellectuals, musicians, architects and some were fishermen and farmers. She and my father were almost opposites, he was dark and brooding and she was blonde and curious.
My father with only a sixth grade education with the help of my mother and his German father who mostly raised him, taught himself to read and write, to survey and prospect in the mountains where we lived, to weld, blacksmith, prospect and mine, and just about anything else he wanted to learn. He barely discussed the fact that he was actually of German and Mestizo “of mixed race, especially one having Spanish and indigenous descent.” having been born in Taos, New Mexico he was of Spanish and Native American heritage on his mother’s side. This grandmother left us a lot of exotic things from her years of collecting..things like Mediterranean furniture, Navajo rugs, kimonos, art, and Indian relics, etc. I found among Dad’s things a set of correspondence course booklets on a wide spectrum of knowledge. I could imagine his excitement as he unwrapped each edition. His creative mind could grasp how things worked and he could invent just about any tool he needed. He was a master welder and could always find work even when others struggled. At one point he even learned how to service one of his wealthy boss’s private planes. He never told us he went up with him to “test” his mechanical abilities on airplanes until later. My maternal grandfather a fisherman and a miner left him a lovely scale set for measuring minerals with which I was fascinated as a child. My childhood toys consisted of such things as tools, machines, books, art materials, and the like. I spent hours working with my Christmas gift of a Chemistry Set. My father used our kitchen coal stove to create gold buttons from the gold panning he did from the mountains around us. The smell of sulphur and the mysterious mercury with which he worked gave me a good chemistry lesson, although I was warned to stay away from the mercury. He told me it was so heavy that if swallowed it went in a straight line directly down into the earth and would rip one’s guts out on the way!
During one of the years he went hunting on horseback my Mom took me to the base camp to meet him on his way down from the mountain trails. I got to get onto his horse, but it spooked and took off, heading back up toward the trail to the mountain. My Mother had to stop him when he raised his gun to shoot the horse to stop him shouting “You’re going to shoot Karen”!!! I managed to throw myself off the horse and landed in a nice sandy pile next to some huge rocks. From then on my family thought surely I had a guardian angel.
So with this background I have understood why my questions were as they were and why I had to create almost constantly. This “Artist Archetype” was alive in me from the very beginning and fortunately encouraged by my unique environment and parents. I had a wonderful childhood even though in material things we lived from paycheck to paycheck, as so many did then.
And so, with this in mind, I am learning to articulate that which I think and hope I can offer as my personal view of this life as an artist.
“I need more friends who understand that I want to be invited, but I’m not going.”
“Life without art
is life, WITHOUT ART!”