D e s e r t E x p o s u r e 
January
2008
Letting Go
Jean Bohlender's paintings map her journey between
loss and love.
By Donna Clayton Lawder
"It's been a tough year," says San Simon, Ariz., artist Jean Chandanais Bohlender. Standing in her sunny studio, surrounded by canvases of her new work, this month's Desert Exposure cover artist explains that in the past year she's lost both her father and a beloved uncle, and been through a variety of emotional transitions — all part of her journey through mid-life, she says.
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Jean Bohlender with one of her raven
paintings. (Photo by Donna Clayton Lawder) |
With the light from her studio window dancing in her clear, bright eyes, she gestures over the rows of paintings propped against her stone fireplace and along its mantle. A poignant portrait of her Uncle Ruben as he lay dying, the path to a cherished family cabin, a sweet memory from her childhood, two lonely trees in a cold open field — these are the images Bohlender has chosen to tell her story, a journey to the depths of sadness and back again.
These works, on exhibit beginning Jan. 25 at the Mimbres Region Arts Council's (MRAC) gallery in the Wells Fargo bank building in Silver City, carry the theme of transition. Entitled "Passing Through: Seasons of Mid-Life Series," the exhibit carries Bohlender's true and tender experiences, much of it linked to loss.
But this is not a sad show. Though it marks Bohlender's journey through loss and change, there is beauty in the sadness and hope beyond the loneliness. Bravely, honestly, Bohlender has put her vulnerable heart on display here. She been to this place of sadness, dwelt there for a while, and has come out if it celebrating life, still determined to love.
Bohlender, who describes herself as having lived "all over," including notable stints in Michigan, Colorado and Texas, moved to San Simon 10 years ago when her husband's family bought the 4,000-acre farm on which they currently live.
Well-known locally for her large body of nature-themed watercolors, she also creates mixed-media pieces, often using acrylic paint for the backgrounds. But her work is mostly oils these days, she says.
Always drawing from an early age, Bohlender says she started painting at age 14 when she found a $10 bill on a Michigan sidewalk and decided to buy herself an oil paint set with the windfall.
"Art was always just a part of what we did in my family," she says. "If we wanted to embroider, my mother tore up sheets and we would draw the pictures on them to embroider. I was always creating, and encouraged to create. Art is cathartic for me."
Bohlender say she's taken a few regular college classes in commercial art, and studied with former Silver City artist Gabriella Denton (see the June 2005 Desert Exposure). But most of her education has been through plain hard work and painting with other artists, she says, naming Sandy Urban (see the September 2007 Desert Exposure) and Crystal Foreman Brown as stalwart painting buddies.
Bohlender's subject matter encompasses everything from fanciful to poignant. "I do a lot of landscapes, also portraits. I paint the people that touch me," she says, pointing out some of the portraits she's painted of a beloved cousin, a friend, her father.
The oil painting of her father places him in the beautiful wilds of Michigan, where the family lived and Bohlender grew up. A few ducks fly overhead and deer stand to his side, blending into his shoulder, which itself blends into the lake behind him. His lovingly rendered, distinctive face reveals his French heritage as clearly as the headstone in the foreground with the name "Chandanais." The trunks of the two trees in the center of the painting are covered in real tree bark.
"I get into the environment I'm in," Bohlender says, noting that a recent painting of ravens circling overhead was inspired by her own yard.
"I stepped out and there they were, just circling overhead. I wanted to catch that movement, the ravens catching the updraft, so that's what that one is about," she explains. "Everybody sees ravens, but what were they to me at that moment? It was like a moment suspended. That's what I'm trying to show here."
She pulls out another painting from a group stacked against a homey wooden cabinet. It, too, is of ravens.
"This was the first I did of this series," she says of the raven painting. "It's called 'Morning Conversation.' I painted this one and my father died. Then I painted the other one and my uncle Ruben died." She shrugs off the idea that she would consider not painting any more ravens, not because of any superstitiousness, but because "death is a part of life, so why not?"
On the death of her uncle, whose last moments are tenderly captured in her painting "Uncle Ruben Dying," Bohlender says, "He gave so much in his dying process. I tried to capture the peace and dignity of that, of his last moments." He was 93 when he passed away, Bohlender notes. "He was a strong man, with a big strong mind, so it took him a long time to die."
The landscapes in this exhibit show Bohlender's dance with sadness as well, her transition from one state to another. In "Like Hope, Rising," the moon rises over mountains in a peaceful sky, darkening from blue to indigo. "It's the view outside my den," Bohlender explains. "There was a sadness that you could feel, that I could feel, anyway, and I think that lonely moon expresses that."
Another landscape, "Still As Death," shows a small stand of trees, the ground around them blanketed in snow, the sky above them darkening in the dusk. One can almost feel the cold, and yet might also feel warmed against it by sharing something of Bohlender's sense of being at peace with her solitude.
Again the landscape speaks in "Waiting." A grouping of trees stands in a small clearing — some in warm hues of red and orange leaves that soon will fall, others, probably evergreens, dressed in cool green. The contrasting colors create a feeling of movement, as the eye is drawn from warm to cool and back again.
"I don't know what you're 'waiting' for, maybe just for the leaves to fall," Bohlender says with a light laugh, "but the sense of waiting for something was what I had when I was looking at those trees."
"The Lit Path" is a painting of the path to a family cabin, a place Bohlender visited in Michigan when her father died. The place has a lot of memories for her, fond childhood memories, she says.
"And that path leads to this field," she says, pointing out a field of daisies in her painting "The Field of Prayers." While the "Path" painting is dark and serene, the light in the sky above slanting in through the thick, dark trees to illuminate the path below, the "Field" painting is also serene, but brilliantly lit. The yellow, orange and white daisies in the foreground seem to nod gaily under the blue sky, a thin line of trees on the horizon the only dark note in the work.
"It's funny," Bohlender muses. "In a way, it was such a sad trip because of the death, and yet it brought back so many happy memories and feelings of family, and I have happy feelings from the paintings that came out of it."
Daisies figure into another work in the series, a larger painting titled "Like Faith, Beginning." Both life and death are depicted here, Bohlender points out. "The daisies, you see, are passing away, but the seagulls are rising," she says, drawing attention to the small group of birds in an open area, two of them taking flight.
She walks to another room and points out her painting "Letting Go," one of the largest works that will be in the MRAC show. In this self-portrait, Bohlender sits in a rocking chair, wearing a powder-blue dress. Her feet are bare and she rests her head in one hand, the other hand resting on the arm of the chair. Her face shows a sense of sad weariness. Yet the sadness is offset by an awareness of acceptance, perhaps.
Bohlender's living human face lights up at the mention of the word "acceptance."
"That's the point I had finally come to when I painted it," she says. "The 'letting go' is on all levels, in all areas of life. Letting go of parents, letting go of children, letting go of those people you love who can't love you."
She pauses, looking at the painting as if trying to feel within her once again that sadness and the transition out of it.
"Depression is an ugly thing, and there is some ugliness here," she says finally. "But there is also something beyond that, and you get to that point through acceptance.
"My intention, always, is to be honest," Bohlender says of her art. "I paint the story I have to tell. That's all I have. It's really all any of us have. And as individual as that is, as specific as it is to each of us, it's also something universal."
Jean Chandanais Bohlender's work can be seen at the MRAC gallery, 1201 Pope St. in Silver City, Jan. 25-March 20, with an opening reception for the artist Jan. 25, 5-6:30 p.m.; for information, call 538-2505 or see www.mimbresarts.org Her work is shown locally at Last Day In Paradise, 211-B N. Texas St., 313-5610., in Silver City; at the Chiricahua Gallery, 5 Pine St. in Rodeo, 557-2225; and at MotherLode in Willcox, Ariz. For more on the artist, see www.jeanbohlender.com