Putting Down Roots
Las Cruces artist Bonnie Mandoe answers
the call of the wild.
By Donna Clayton Lawder
Like the pecan trees she is so fond of painting, Las Cruces artist Bonnie Mandoe is putting down roots. Having lived in Hawaii for more than 30 years while raising her family, Mandoe came to New Mexico in 1994, first living in Mogollon, then Silver City, and finally settling into Las Cruces in 2003.
"I love the New Mexico sky," she says. "That light!"
In Hawaii, with its deep, lush tropical vegetation, she lived a different kind of life, raising children, owning her own catering company and authoring a cookbook, Vegetarian Nights: Fresh from Hawaii. But it was in the bright sunlight of New Mexico, with the start of a new, "unencumbered" phase of life, that Mandoe's painting really took hold. And it was in Las Cruces that she found her subject and cause: the land.
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Bonnie Mandoe with one of the works
from her recent show, "Wild Pecans." |
In the Hawaiian language, the word for land is 'aina. The word for "people," Mandoe says, has the same, well, root and translates as "from the land," showing the Hawaiian people's deep connection to the earth beneath their feet. Bringing that earthy appreciation to the foothills of the Organ Mountains framing her town, Mandoe says, "I want people to appreciate our orchards. They sustain us in a special way. If we lose those orchards to housing development, it will change the nature of the town."
She was born on a chicken farm and has always had a vegetable garden, she says. The big old farmhouse she lives in today, on a quiet side street in Las Cruces, was built in 1892 and held in the same family for three generations. Mandoe won a building award earlier this year for a local home she restored, and now she is applying her loving and artistic hand to her current dwelling, her fourth residential restoration.
"Las Cruces is a really easy town to live in," she says, settling into a sturdy wooden chair at her sizeable kitchen table. Abundant windows let in the day's brilliant light, illuminating the dramatic double-decker wood cabinets that run to the high ceiling. The place is a caterer's dream, with lots of floor space, countertops and an attractive and functional cooking island, spotlighted by a sunbeam.
"I loved Silver City," she says, "but it's, at its heart, a mining town. Las Cruces takes me back to my agricultural roots."
Mandoe says the lush beauty of the local pecan groves inspires her, and those trees were the subject of her recent show, "Wild Pecans," at Cruz Nopal Gallery in Las Cruces, her first local one-person show. She came up with the exhibit's title by combining her subject matter, the pecan trees, and her fauvist painting style: "Les Fauves" is French for "the wild beasts," giving her the wild in "Wild Pecans." The fauvists were a group of artists in the early 1900s who began painting in wildly expressive colors. Henri Matisse is credited with being the movement's originator, as he struggled to break down boundaries and find new ways to express himself with color.
"In fauvism, nothing is just as it looks," Mandoe explains, "It's about how it feels. That's what the colors convey."
This month's Desert Exposure cover, "Red Trees," shows her beloved pecan groves bathed in deep, vibrant reds, her fauvist treatment adding a sense of heat, or even movement.
Mandoe paints with water-based oils, working from myriad photographs of her subjects. She is particularly fond of a local friend's property, with its rows of stately pecan trees and a cozy farmhouse.
"I called her up and said, 'Tell me when you are going to irrigate,'" Mandoe recalls. "Then I went out and took a whole bunch of shots of the trees with the water (pooled around their trunks) and their house in the back."
Mandoe pulls out a handful of photographs of a grove, taken from a variety of angles. "You have to almost sort out what you're looking at. That's the mystery of it," she says, adding, "That's the fun part for me."
She holds one of the photos near the painting she created from it. Though the shapes and perspective are representational, her treatment of the subject—particularly the colors she has chosen—gives the scene an almost otherworldly feeling. Though the pecan trees are, of course, cultivated, they take on a wild quality from the rich colors in which Mandoe has cloaked them. Gone are the browns of the photographic image, replaced with vibrant purples and deep, dark greens. The scene could perhaps be a rain forest, exuding an impression of coolness and calm. The irrigation pools beneath the trees reflect a mirror image of the dusky sky, the setting sun, the trees themselves.
In another painting, Mandoe points out how mountains in the distance are reflected in the pooled water beneath the pecan trees. Their reflected image is more noticeable than the actual mountains on the horizon, visible over the treetops. The eye is first drawn to the more brilliant reflected image in the water below, then up to the actual mountains above the trees.
House images reappear in Mandoe's work, too. In one painting, a house is depicted in deep, serene hues, creating a feeling of familiarity and comfort. In another painting, a house glows yellow—seemingly lit from within—in the deep of the forest. This golden house seems a place of mystery. While the blue, serene house in one painting seems solid, grounded and welcoming, the glowing yellow house in another work is ethereal, perhaps nothing more than a projection of the imagination, a mirage of some wanderer aching for home in the midst of the forest.
Mandoe points out some of her other works, different from the pecan orchard series. Though her color choices still reflect her fauvist style, the subject matter in particular is meant to pay tribute to her "masters," artists whom she respects and whose work influenced her style.
In one, a group of orange-red fish brings to mind one of her fauvist inspirations, Matisse. In another, two figures look to each other across an expanse of water. Vaguely aboriginal in their simplicity, their poses seem somehow familiar. This painting is an homage Mandoe says, to Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the German expressionist painter who died in 1976.
She also shows some works-in-progress in her studio. Just off her airy farmhouse kitchen, the painting studio is likewise brightly lit, that New Mexico sunlight streaming through its many windows. On one easel is a painting of a woman's body, strategic parts highlighted with bold, fauvist colors. Though in perfect scale and proportion, the hues are anything but realistic. On another easel is a landscape in progress.
Though Mandoe has yet to enter her work in juried competitions, she feels this may be right around the corner. With her first local solo show under her belt and her easels full of new paintings-in-progress, she is busy compiling her next themed body of work.
Looking at the world situation these days can lead to feelings of hopelessness, Mandoe says. "Art is how I answer that to myself," she says, then adds with a big smile, "I've been fearless over the past six months."
Bonnie Mandoe's work can be viewed by appointment at her private home gallery in Las Cruces, 523-9760.
Donna Clayton Lawder is senior editor of Desert Exposure.