In preparing for a career as an artist, the first and most fortunate event of my childhood was to be born into a calm, orderly home to loving and engaged parents. Because both my sedate, cerebral mother and my humorous, quick-witted father respected others and one another, they also respected me. Neither one would correct my drawings or enter my light-filled playroom without knocking — uninterrupted imagination space for a child was of the highest priority. There, where artwork covered the small tables, my mother always asked if a piece could be placed in an album or shared with relatives, while my father got such a kick out of those colorful early scribbles he would make up stories about the wild characters hiding inside them. Those weren’t simply random scribbles: By age 2, serious research was underway on creatures — primarily ants — populating our magical backyard.
A second life-shaping event was in learning the magic of words. Having a mother for whom education was a vocation meant that by 21/2, I was well launched in phonics; and by 3, a voracious appetite for reading had begun. Weekly trips to the public library opened another wondrous, hushed, and absolutely sacred world in which I could choose any book — or even two.
The third event on the road to becoming an artist happened at Christmas at age 4, when my wonderfully indulgent bachelor uncle presented me with an oil painting set. These practical and well-laid-out sets featured saccharine images such as flying eagles, bucolic farms, tribal chiefs and others of the paint-by-numbers repertoire, which soon adorned walls of his and other relatives’ houses. The packaged paint-by-number art did not matter — what mattered was LEARNING TO PAINT IN OIL. It became an obsession.
The final cataclysmic event that was to shape my career as an artist occurred early in the spring of my fifth year. On our habitual Sunday walk, my father and I passed a small farm where three cows routinely came to greet us, receiving the three apples we always brought for them. On this Sunday, the three cows did not appear. After speaking quietly with the farmer in the barn, my father gently explained that the three had gone to become steaks and hamburgers. It was a discussion he would forever rue: I never ate meat again. That decisive action put me in even closer affinity with my most mesmerizing companion, nature.
Throughout schools, both public and private, teachers would always turn to me as class artist when empty spaces needed to be enlivened. By fourth grade, I was reliably relieved from math classes to create gigantic murals in the school’s halls.
Later, four years of fascinating art history classes — plus a studio barn that was open all day — provided a welcome balance to the more competitive world of high school. Although our rather rule-bound traditional girl’s school employed only female faculty, somehow one engaging Renaissance man had managed to find employment due to his brother being a co-founder of The Paris Review. Sensing myriad enthusiasms, Mr. Train gave me the key to the art history library. No greater gift could be imagined by my inquisitive 15-year-old brain. As high school ended, no one had yet pulled the rug out from under me.
That rug pulling would not happen until halfway through my freshman year of college, when the head of the art department ripped up all of my semester’s work. “Get a different major, Miss Hubbard. You’re not an artist.” The chilling effect of his words remains a curiosity today. Collecting my shredded drawings from the studio floor, I walked to the dean’s office and conveyed the need to change my major to English. For six scholarly years — through matriculations at universities of Oslo, Pennsylvania, and Cornell — no form of visual expression would appear from my hand.
Then, approximately six years to the day, on a sidewalk in Ithaca, New York, the period of intense intellectual inhaling ended as suddenly as it had begun. Through a serendipitous meeting with musician John Cage, I was an artist again. Ignored, even unknown, by much of the academic community, Mr. Cage was reviled by members of the music department at Cornell. During that meeting on the sidewalk he stated that after observing me in his lectures all semester, and after discovering I was the only one in a class of 30 who completed the assignment to record the earth’s night sounds on the Cornell campus, he understood that I was the one class artist and I’d better run as fast as I could from my Medieval Ph.D. program. “The time has come to begin to be yourself again, Miss Hubbard, you’re an artist.”
Why do I make art? I don’t do it to communicate, although it is communication. I don’t do it for the thrill of creativity, although it is thrilling to
make things. I don’t do it for therapy, although being creative is undeniably therapeutic. My work is not about ego, recognition, showing off, net- working, awards or pats on the back. Why I continue is that I simply LOVE to paint.
When the discovery of a new paint color — a new blue — was announced in The New York Times on February 7, 2021, I was incredulous. Acquiring a sample was a different matter, seemingly impossible. Although sold out everywhere, months later, on December 25, a tiny 5 ml. tube of YInMn Blue was delivered to my studio door, signaling a project’s auspicious start.
This new painting would take part in the series I began during the pandemic, Marking Time, but with a new title, Marking Place.
As travel began to be constricted in March of 2020, gallery openings, such as mine at Walter Wickiser, were canceled. In the midst of that shock, the discovery that just outside my window was an opera in the sky inspired the first of 30 watercolor paintings in Marking Time, a fitting title since that is literally what we did during the pandemic.
To start the new year 2024, I participated in (re)FOCUS, a Philadelphia exhibit focused on work made both today and 50 years ago by the same 80 women. Upon returning home, I was eager to create a totally new painting in a totally new color. When, despite near-blizzard conditions, the ferries continued to run to the island and the crucial package of 300 lb. cold press Arches paper was delivered, I heard opportunity knock. It was time to incorporate snow — a medium I had yet to try.
Testing the new YInMn Blue on the Arches paper produced a shade somewhere between cobalt, ultramarine, and possibly delft, or periwinkle, depending on how one thins it with water.
Since so much else was new, I decided that painting with snow and ice, in snow and ice, was the appropriate route to take. Pairing an unfamiliar material with an unfamiliar method equals invention — the vitamin I thrive on. Light and how it can be expressed through color is my primary concern, and the constantly changing light on Martha’s Vineyard is an invigorating challenge.
Because this piece was to be part of the ongoing series Marking Place, a memorable Vineyard sunset divided in horizontal sections appeared as if on call off West Chop.
With that inspiration and several lines of pigment, process, the heart of the matter began. It would be 58 days before a final image announced its independence. No longer a recording of a sky but a new drama, an original.
At the start of this project, what we have are a few bands of the new color and 99.5 percent possibility. The next steps decide everything, and I placed the nascent painting outside on a snowy table to see what direction might be indicated.
As the snow petered out and the temperature warmed slightly — drip, drip, drip, came the answer. Despite my tiny precious tube of YInMn paint, I would have to forge ahead throwing caution, and this unique pigment, to the wind. Not brushing but pouring the color onto the painting was the answer. However, I’d forgotten one crucial point: WIND. Throughout this project, my battle with wind was constant, freezing my hands and at times even testing the strength of robust Arches paper.
At this point, it might make sense to address my most commonly asked question: “Where do you get your ideas?” The answer is that my work is not an idea. When you are an inspiration painter, as I am, a painting is not a decision. For me, even with a commission, it arrives by serendipitous delivery — by opening a door or a window to a bulletin from an unexpected but dynamic direction. The worst thing one can do is to analyze inspiration.
In this case, I decided to treat a certain section of my piece with melted snow water into which I would add shots of pigment directly from a coarse brush. After pouring water, every- thing froze, and the painting was now a literal sheet of ice. To prevent the paper from cracking, another new art procedure was required: thawing. When it came time to introduce a second color, I was more savvy. Using warmed snow, I premixed the pigment Brilliant Opera Rose, an intense and beguiling rose, also made by Schmincke. So, very carefully, I heated the paper, the brush, and my hands. That worked so well that it became a go-to tool for this project.
Winsor & Newton’s Winsor Orange and Daiel Smith’s Lemon Yellow followed with only a few benign ice clusters and mixed easily with both ice and with melted snow. Unfortunately, my cat Freya discovered the comfort of warm paper and had to be repeatedly removed to the catio.
As February’s snow began melting, I began saving it in jars and pots. Since snow was the medium starting this project, sticking with it was a must. A long period of rain set in once the temperature rose slightly, so the work transferred to my more predictable studio space. At this point the basic colors, shapes and tones were set. Boundary relationships would evolve slowly in process.
YInMn Blue areas were my focus. Using a sharpened delft blue pencil, I drew into the many sections and layers created by that icy pigment. It is not thought that comes into play here but experience and a deep familiarity with the tools of the trade. Softened by distilled snow, my index finger crushed a soft pastel stick into a blended orange area.
When the painting and I had danced together for two months, our fox trot ended. “Step back,” it said, “I’m on my own.” I listened. Committed, project- driven and ultra-intentional, yes, I admit to that, but I’ve never been accused of being very practical. Example: moving to an island based entirely on aesthetics.
Artists can seem “dreamy” or “not quite there” because — through our imagination’s lens — we are always trying to see what really is there in the polyphony behind domestication, outside time. It can be a challenge, even a struggle. When I seem to be in outer Pluto I’m scanning for the range of color in the flap of a wing, wondering if it’s coal black against magenta, or as in an entire heron, glaring Bengal rose over metallic gold at sunset.
My artistic method: avoid comfort; be definite. My process: observe, record, reinvent. Uniting my practice is color. Learned at 5 by copying Edvard Munch, color became my artist’s language. Whether two-dimensional or three, whether a representational crow or an imagined galaxy, my job’s singular purpose is to report reality’s news through color, my fluent translator.
Artists are born but we are also made. While knowing nothing about art encouragement in a Mesolithic childhood, having been born to supportive and respectful older parents had a profound impact. It formed the basis for lifelong security in a profession not many parents encourage. I thank them daily, ever wondering at their patience.
