Page 22 - the NOISE April 2015

THE ANCIENT & THE AGELESS
ABOVE, FROM LEFT:
No Hell, Only Mercy and Conspiracy of the BY CLAIR ANNA ROSE OF NATURE & INTERPRETATION Game. by David Lash.
On a weekday afternoon Flagstaff painter David Lash is in The stories and the details in Mr. Lash’s paintings aren’t al- “They don’t know coyotes. In the paper the other day — 800
ways blatant. In one painting that the artist describes as “al- most abstract” a mountain lion lounges in the far upper left corner of the painting, so small beside the rock wall that dominates the canvas. Mr. Lash describes finding the details in the painting similar to the experience you would have if you paddled up to the same wall in a kayak, as you get close to the painting you see the nests of cliff swallows under a ledge, the texture of the rock wall and the reflection of water on the rocks.
He points to Resurrection, a painting of leafless winter trees on a deep red background, and tells me its story. “I used to ride up the Gold King Mine to the top of Mingus, and there’s this one place where the road stops its relentless climb and you enter this little oak grove — it’s so peaceful, and then the climb begins again,” he says. “My dad’s ashes are in there. That’s where he wanted to be. He loved being up there. So that’s what those oak trees are all about. They’re in full, sap- less winter. The sap is down in their roots. It’s the blood, the life-force of the tree. The couple of leaves, for me (represent) fall, the promise of life. Fall for me is a time that is symbolic, like a butterfly, these delicate little things, these leaves — there are billions upon billions. Every year they come out as little tiny buds and they shade us from the heat and in their death they’re the most beautiful they could possibly be. They go to the earth and they create topsoil. From the topsoil the tree draws its nutrients. They never stop giving. That’s what my father did for me.”
Mr. Lash tells me that he often gets asked how he comes up with his ideas for paintings. He slides a sketchbook into the center of the table and flips open the cover. As he leafs through the pages, he shows me what sketch became what painting, directing my attention all around the room.
“Sometimes just a very simple sketch will lead to the idea,” he shares. “He shows me a sketch of a chessboard with a wolf standing in its center. “Some people, because of their fear, make up things that are terrible about wolves and pass it on as fact.” In the sketch he has drawn the wolf with both devil horns and a halo, to question the nature of the wolf.
Mr. Lash turns another page in the sketchbook, now the chessboard has two wolves moving across it. As the pages turn the idea for the painting changes angles, changes animals. At one point kites and hawks flit in the air, in another sketch pag- es from Mr. Lash’s sketchbook lay beside a trap in the woods. Dead coyotes hang on a fence in one rendering and finally the idea of the wolves on the chessboard is returned to.
“I’ve had people say things to me like, ‘why would you waste your time painting a coyote?’” Mr. Lash sadly recalls.
the drive outside his home studio, readying his kayak for a trip down the Verde River the next morning. Inside the studio, a drum kit stands to one side, and paintings are propped on ev- ery imaginable surface. A work in progress is coming to life on the easel and wintery light comes in through the glass windows that open to a view of the surrounding ponderosa forest.
Placed in the center of the room is his painting No Hell, Only Mercy that has been selected for the Southwestern Invita- tional Exhibit. The show opens at the Yuma Fine Arts As- sociation on April 10, and will travel to five other galleries around Arizona including Flagstaff’s own Coconino Center for the Arts in January 2016.
“The painting was started years and years ago,” Mr. Lash tells me. “It was a commission for a Sonora bald eagle and I couldn’t fulfill it. As I worked on the piece, I did a sketch of this. I backpacked up near Porcupine, near the border. It’s painted from memory basically, that’s how most of the stuff I do is, it just comes out of my head.”
No Hell, Only Mercy is a view of the Sonoran Desert, golden light playing on rock walls and shadows of clouds draping the harsh landscape in luxurious shade. Browns and muted greens of a dry landscape are a contrast to the bright Arizona Sky, almost as great as the orange of monarch wings traveling through the valley.
He tells me of friends who unexpectedly passed away. “As you get older you start losing friends because machinery wears out. You see your friends dying — so I did butterflies
— the eternal return of nature. Butterflies are so delicate and the Sonoran desert is so anciently ageless and it’s such a harsh, brutal country. If you fall down in it you’re going to get stickers in your hands or get lacerated by the rocks. I love it; it is so absolutely beautiful. So I painted the juxtaposition of the butterflies against the land that some think is really harsh and lifeless with butterflies that are symbols of resurrection, transformation and new life.”
He describes his painting as “the act of becoming.” “You don’t wake up one day being able to put together sentences,” Mr. Lash tells me. “To make a great wordsmith it’s the act of becoming. Everything in life is that way. If it’s admired, if it’s revered — It’s difficult.”
Having gone on many adventures in his life, Mr. Lash tells me one way he finds inspiration. “Adventures depend upon fear for me, fear of the unknown. I love going there. One of the things I’ll do is put an empty canvas there on the easel and that right there is the scariest thing in my life — an empty can- vas. What am I going to do with it? Each time it’s a challenge.”
coyotes killed. Why? Because the coyotes kill Antelope fawn,
and the hunters, the game and fish, are killing these coyotes — they want to be the ones who kill them (antelope fawn).”
With a love for wildlife, Mr. Lash wants to see the animals he loves, the animals that are meant to be in the landscapes he paints thrive. Recently when cycling down in Cottonwood, Mr. Lash tells me of his observation, “Everywhere I look I see land so abused,” he says. “It impacts the caring capacity for the animals I love. I was working at the department of agri- culture when I was 18. I was working on grass populations in southern Arizona. Dr. Hall saw my sketchbook one day and he said, ‘If you really want to do something for these animals, you’d get these cattle off the land. They don’t belong right here. This isn’t the place for them.’”
At that time Mr. Lash was first becoming interested in bi- cycle racing, and two of the best racers were vegetarian. He decided to try it not only in an attempt to improve his racing, but to also stop supporting an industry that was destructive to the land he loved. “I can look at a cow on public land and say for almost 50-some years now that I’ve not supported that particular industry. The west is used for calves, cows aren’t raised out here, it’s a calving operation, they’re put in feed lots and you know the rest of the story — it’s brutality on a scale that’s unimaginable. Being the idealist, I didn’t want to be part of that. I write letters, I go to meetings. I’m going to be 65 here on my next birthday, if I knew at this age that all the letters I’ve written would have little or no impact I would still be doing it, because I’m doing it for me as much as the land.”
“I’m such an idealist. I want to be the greatest wildlife artist in the world. How do I do that? I work like crazy. Will I ever get there? Hell, I kinda doubt it. But it’s the act of doing it. Is it practical? Well, it’s practical in the sense that hopefully some- one will look at a painting and they’ll make a connection with it. Somehow it sparks an interest. If I didn’t have the passion that comes from my idealism, I don’t know if I would be doing art.”
This April David Lash will be showing prints of his paint- ings, along with a few originals at the Old Town Frame Company, 1028 North Main Street, in old town Cotton- wood. In conjunction, he will also be showing his latest bird paintings at the Manheim Gallery, 747 North Main Street Cottonwood, in April that coincides with the Verde Valley Birding & Nature Festival. DavidLash.com
| Clair Anna Rose knows her birds.
clair@thenoise.us
22 • APRIL 2015 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us