In the same way it took until my mid thirties to discover I was an artist, it has taken until maturity to recognize the deep worth in my family stories, my genetic predispositions, my cellular relationship to the “long ago” know times of the planet. I have, however, always been interested in the stories the earth has to tell and the native populations who understood from the beginning that all life forms are intertwined.
I began my
“art story” in clay and theater, but as soon as I discovered the three dimensional
surface, I never looked back. After
graduating from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA in 1981, my children went to live
with their father for several years and I headed to Seattle where I entered a very active and
exciting art community. Under the guidance of Seattle painter, Karen Guzak, with whom I
studied privately for two years, I developed my own art “language”.
I showed my
work in multiple venues from studio hallways to juried museum exhibits to solo
exhibitions, and won multiple painting awards (see resume). As
Artist-in-Residence for WA State, I taught classes in the WA state prisons. I
have been strongly influenced by the natural world. I see there the interrelationship of and
cyclical influences inherent in all beings; plant, animal and human. In
describing these interests through my images I often use a spherical sun/moon
and repetitions of symbols, creating a musical flow in the rhythms both seen
and implied.
In 1979 I
took my first trip to the American Southwest. Before, during and ever since
that trip I have found in the ways of the Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo cultures
reference to the same rhythms and spiritual interconnectedness that is such a
strong basis for my beliefs and my artwork.
The next journey was to South America, where there is a strongly similar mix of native and
Spanish culture. The art forms, the building materials, the sky and light, the
nature of ceremony made physical for me the life of spirit. My way of making
images was solidified. My eventual and
inevitable move to the Southwest coincided with a painting fellowship at the
Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, NM.
My work
with the Creation/Migration Collaboration is inclusive of a lifetime of images
and philosophies tied into a meaningful artistic relationship. Information gathered from the DNA genographic study has opened new
worlds of thought and stimulated interest in my own genealogical
information. The artwork that has come
from and continues to build on this project is biographical in nature to include
remembrances of family events that have worked their way into myth and tie into
other mythological stories of the people along my ancient migration route all
the way back to the Mitochondrial Eve in Ethiopia. It enhances my belief in the
interrelationship of all peoples.
I am
finding and using photographs and artifacts from my family histories and
expanding these to include the stories of others. For example, the “Fruits of
Her Labor” piece utilizes photographs from my own matrilineal line, items from
my own life experience, imagery typical of my style, in the format of traditional
women’s work, all wrapped in the idea of reproduction. This is a nearly direct representation, but
my paintings, while more symbolic in nature, still tie together my own story to
that of the larger world.
Donna J
Caulton
February
2013
45" x 54" Acrylic on canvas
Symbolic of "birthing" my imagery onto the New Mexico landscape, incorporation light/dark. moon cycles, celestial and earthly, and the far and the near.
Acrylic on canvas with collage elements
46"x 4"
The amorphousness of the spirit/god nature balances the physicality of the DNA helix and cellular structure of matrix.
All combine in the rhythm of life.
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