When Joan Watts moved to New Mexico from New York in 1986, the light, space, and silence overwhelmed her, and the landscape became the influence critics and curators referenced when discussing her paintings. But there is something more complex in Watts' work. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the artist completed a series of paintings with titles such as Yantra, Zazen, and Zero that directly implied Hindu or Buddhist content.
Many writers have noted the spiritual qualities in Watts' paintings, using words like "ephemeral" to describe the luminosity of the paint, or "meditative" to describe her subtle formal choices — all outcomes, they suggest, of her examination of the landscape. I wonder if, instead, the light and space of New Mexico gave Watts (a dedicated Zen practitioner since 1989) the vehicle for relating the spiritual experiences she had on the meditation cushion and in her daily life.
I arrive at Joan Watt's home and studio on a gloriously sunny Memorial Day. She leads me into her impressive studio where her newest paintings, in cool gradations of blue, purple, and gray, line the warm, white walls. These paintings are included in her solo exhibit at Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, opening on Friday, June 6. Paintings that span nearly 40 years of work, some on circular canvases, are neatly stored in racks on one wall of the studio. The chronological story of this work is included in a richly illustrated new monograph on Watt's life and paintings, published by Radius Books. The book features a foreword by former SITE Santa Fe director Louis Grachos and an essay by Art in America contributor Lilly Wei. Garcia Street Books hosts a talk and book signing with Watts and Wei on Saturday, June 7.
Each painting on her studio wall presents a gradation of colors — gradually lightening from darker shades and finally becoming purely white, so subtly that the changes are imperceptible. Watts invites me to move closer to the paintings so that I can see that the edges of the canvases were painted solid white. This is the tip-off, she says, that all of the painted mark is on the surface; that there is only an illusion of depth in the paintings — in actuality the paintings are truly flat. At one point, Watts began removing all evidence of gesture and mark in her paintings, and this tendency, along with the use of monochromatic color, led some to label her a minimalist. Watts' paintings use reductive forms, but all of her work references emotional and spiritual experience. But how do you make a physical object that directly expresses a spiritual or meditative experience?
Watts' new paintings include two distinct marks: the horizontal lines of the thick, dried gesso, and the wavy, horizontal marks of the paint itself, which she rubs into the surface with rags. "Everything is waves," Watts explains, "sound, light, water, energy. And there are waves during meditation — waves of thought.
"The transient and luminous light of New Mexico has certainly been a penetrating 'vehicle' enveloping my spiritual path, but it is also true that my spiritual path propels me to somehow discover the means to evoke light and space through painting," Watts says. After beginning her meditation practice in 1989, the process of making a painting also became a form of meditation for Watts. "Now when I begin a painting, I have only a vague feeling about where to go," she says. "The painting takes over, and I disappear. The process is no longer ego-bound. But the moment before the ego drops is pure fear. I know I am losing it — losing my ego as my base. It is the same experience in sitting meditation, when the ego drops away. When I am working, it is completely intuitive, and there is the intellectual aspect afterwards. Only later can I reflect — who painted that? While I am painting, there is no 'me,' no extra thought, no judgment."
Watts' work has a quality of reaching everywhere without being attached to the forms of the physical world. So when someone asks her what the paintings are about or what she means by them, the question is not easily answered, especially if the inquirer expects a response that relates to the world of objects and associations. That might be why one viewer of her works at the New Mexico Museum
of Art in Santa Fe left the angry indentation of his fist in one canvas. The ego demands something, anything, to attach itself to. But in Watts' paintings, there is no-thing.
I saw nothing in Rothko's paintings, I admit to Watts, until I visited the Rothko Chapel in Houston for the first time. When I entered the chapel and saw the huge black canvases, I didn't understand why anyone would present black paintings of nothing to describe spirituality. Why black? Why no religious images or symbols? I sat there for a long time repeating those questions to myself and really looking at the work. Then I saw it: the paintings weren't black — they were purple and many other subtle colors — and they slowly revealed themselves to me. Rothko had created an experience for me rather than showing me a picture. I walked in angry with Rothko and walked out in awe.
"I visited that chapel several times after my mastectomy," Watts says, "and also had a powerful experience with the work. Seeing the Rothko Chapel was healing for me, and it was the beginning of my meditation practice, although I didn't know it at the time."
This kind of discovery happens when viewers of art allow themselves to sit, to ask questions, and to allow questions. The work can then reveal itself. This kind of discovery can happen if one spends time with Watts' work rather than looking at it briefly.
In Not Always So, a collection of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki, the Zen teacher writes, "To exist in big mind is an act of faith, which is different from the usual faith of believing in a particular idea or being. It is to believe that something is supporting us and supporting all our activities including thinking mind and emotional feelings. All these things are supported by something big that has no form or color. It is impossible to know what it is, but something exists there, something that is neither material nor spiritual. Something like that always exists, and we exist in that space." Watts shows us how the inner landscape and the outer landscape are one and the same — one big space — and we exist in that space.
Joan Watts
Opening reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, June 6; exhibit through June
Charlotte Jackson Fine Art, 200 W. Marcy St., Suite 101; 989-8688
This review was originally published in the June 6, 2008 issue of Pasatiempo/The New Mexican.
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