Page 16 - the NOISE August 2012

CONTINUED FROM 15
Samtusa by Erica Fareio is an example of the cover artist’s use of color and detail; her work is featured at Coconino
Center for the Arts and during Open Studios in August.
COLORS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Colors seem to swirl and leap, fragments of bright pigment turn in tight and cascade down and back into itself as the sun shines through the curl of a giant ocean wave. A ripple of the sun’s reflection stretches across the surface of the water in Erica Fareio’s Paint- ing, Pulse.
This August, paintings by Erica Fareio can be seen at the Coconino Center for the Arts, Flagstaff Open Studios and beginning in September, West of the Moon Gallery.
“I am participating in Flagstaff Open Stu- dios for the first time,” Ms. Fareio tells me. “I am very excited to open up my space and share my ideas and art with the community. I will be showing many of my Grand Canyon paintings and some very recent paintings that have been inspired by time spent near the ocean in Costa Rica. I will also have lim- ited edition Gicleé prints and note cards for sale. I have not yet decided on a piece for the prelude show, but it will most likely be a Grand Canyon piece.”
For the last 15 years, Ms. Fareio has been a full-time river guide. Grand Canyon, where she spends so much of her life each summer, is a constant inspiration and subject in her paintings. This year, however, she has decid- ed to invite change into her life and open the doors even wider to creativity by narrowing her usually-full river season down to two trips.
“I haven’t spent a summer in Flagstaff for a long time. I am loving it. It is a great place to be and I feel very fortunate to live in a com- munity that is making many positive con- tributions. We are surrounded by so much
beauty here. It is a joy to be in my studio, which is also my home. It is situated on a hill where I can view and appreciate the sunset every day and you get the feeling that you are in a tree-house. The birds love it here too — the backyard has become a downtown habi- tat for some of Flagstaff’s finest creatures!”
“I have decided to shift my focus to art,” she explains. “My compounding experiences liv- ing and guiding in Grand Canyon have been elemental to my art and to the direction it is taking. This time spent in wilderness commu- nal settings has nurtured the belief in me that we are connected to each other and connect- ed to our planet at a very fundamental level. This belief is what fuels my art.”
“Cutting back my river season has been vi- tal for me to be able to move forward with my art,” Ms. Fareio continues. “Being a river guide is a true passion of mine and I hope to always do trips, but it came time for me to make a shift. River guiding is hard work and it eventually takes its toll on the body. During a full river season, it was very difficult to get any traction with my art. I was always either recovering from a trip or getting ready to go on the next one. Now that I am home, I am able to take better care of myself and nurture myself, which in turn nurtures my creativity. I now have time to observe nature’s rhythms and cycles right here in my backyard.
“I am realizing that you don’t need Grand Canyon or to be in the rain forest of Costa Rica to be able to tap into that ‘life force.’ Sure, be- ing in an incredible place like Grand Canyon helps, but it is not necessary. That magic, that life force, is always here and it is a part of us
no matter where we are or what we are doing. It is just so often obscured by our thoughts. This is what my art is becoming for me now. The process of creating art is an avenue for me to cut through my own conditioned mind patterns and tap into the universal life force, our true nature. It is a practice. And, simulta- neously, it is also where the art and all these concepts come from. In a way, I feel like the art is being given to me and that it is my re- sponsibility to share it.”
The natural world not only inspires art in Ms. Fareio, but also a clearer understanding. She tells me some of her thoughts on our mod- ern society, and how she believes art plays an important role in helping us to revise our way of thinking to a more peaceful balance. “I choose to paint the natural world. The cycles, rhythms and patterns of nature are such a po- etic metaphor for aspects of our own day to day living, our ups and downs, challenges and relationships. Through my own observations, I see that there is a divine intelligence or force that gives life to all things. This force is what keeps the universe in its perfect orbits and el- lipses. It is what makes the waves crash onto the shore and what lets the flowers know when to open and close. It is the same force that breathes us and pumps blood through our veins and gives each one of us our unique creativity. It is also where true love and hap- piness reside.”
“This concept unfortunately is overlooked by too many in our modern day society,” she continues. “It is instead replaced with the be- lief that the human race is somehow separate from the rest of the living community and the
planet. We run our society as if we are sepa- rate parts of a machine and as if the Earth is a machine. From a very young age, we are taught to honor independence and compe- tition. We are told that we have to grow up and be somebody and get ahead of the race, usually at the expense of someone else. We are taught that materialism is a pathway to happiness. It is a psychological problem, and it is the underlying problem that all other problems and unhappiness arise from on an individual, collective and universal scale. Al- bert Einstein said that, ‘Humanity is going to require a substantially new way of thinking if it is to survive.’ This statement is true now more than ever. We need to evolve if we are to survive and that evolution needs to take place on the level of consciousness.
“So, what can we do?” Ms. Fareio asks. “I be- lieve that we do have the power to evolve and change. I believe it is our true nature to live in harmony with each other and the planet. But we have a lot of work to do. Our society’s way of thinking has powerful momentum behind it and is entrenched in nearly every aspect of our lives. We have a lot of patterns to unravel within our dense mind structures and we can only start with ourselves. We will need to practice and we will need tools. This is the in- tention of my art. It is a tool and it is meant to pull you back to your true nature. It is meant to cut through the layers of the conditioned mind and help you to see that we are all con- nected by the same life force. It is meant to help you see that this is a participatory uni- verse and everything we do, say and think, af- fects the whole.
16 • AUGUST 2012 • the NOISE arts & news magazine • thenoise.us