Cindy Stapper

Springtime in the Mountains

What drama! We went from blooming orchards one afternoon to 6 inches of snow the next morning – but it’s all beautiful.

Arboles y Agua

Evening Near Bountiful
Stormy Day at Blue Spring
Quiet Clearing
El Valle Orchard

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this has been a difficult spring for me.  My father died last month, and I’ve been spending alot of time with my family in Texas.  The paintings above are part of an ongoing spring collection entitled “Arboles Y Agua” featured this month at  Copper Moon Gallery in Taos.  You can view them in more detail on my Recent Work page, click on “permalink” for image titles and information.   The gallery will be hosting a “meet the artist” day on Earth Day, Aprill 22nd.  More details to follow!

Taos Magazine, March/April Issue

I’m very pleased to announce that I’m the featured artist in the Spring issue of Taos Magazine.  I’ll be posting the new paintings I’ve completed for my ongoing body of work, “Arboles y Agua” in the next few days.

In Memory of My Father

My father, Henry Stapper, died March 11 at the age of 80.  He was a private person, but I don’t think he’d mind if I share this story:

Four years ago, Dad and I made a pilgrimage to the Antique Rose Emporium, our favorite  springtime excursion close to his home near San Antonio.  It was our routine to head first for the vast selection of antique roses for sale, then to take our time wandering the several acres of display gardens where the old roses are planted among perennials and Texas natives,  rambling over adobe walls and pergolas and surrounding fountains and farm style outbuildings. We rounded a corner and stopped short, grinning at each other in amazement.  The old fashioned fenced yard in front of us was waist high in deep crimson, ruffle headed poppies.   Neither of us had ever seen anything like it, and Dad was enchanted. The path through this riot of color led to the porch of the “farmhouse” sales office. Inside, he asked about the poppies.  The saleswoman was reluctant to sell him the seeds – they were rather unpredictable, she explained, and tended to come up with a single head rather than the ruffles we’d seen outside.  Dad didn’t care, he just loved the color and so he bought some seed anyway.

Antique Rose Emporium

In most areas of his life, my father was conservative, a cautious product of his Depression era upbringing on a dryland farm.  But in his gardening, my father was a fearless gambler.  He was willing to try growing just about anything, and even the most pathetic or unlikely plants flourished under his care.  “I’ll just stick it in the ground and see what happens” he was fond of saying, and so he did with the poppies, scattering the seed in a corner of his large vegetable garden.

Nothing much happened the following spring, and nothing at all came up in the drought year after that.  But this spring, the poppies came early to Dad’s garden.  He’d missed gardening for some time, his leukemia had weakened him too much to work outside.  When I finally walked down to the vegetable garden, I stopped short in amazement. The poppies had taken over entirely, an exuberant explosion of red that overran the orderly rows and bounded through the fence and down the hill.   Singles and ruffles, my brother and I gathered an armful to take inside for Dad to enjoy one last time.

Like Dad, I’m something of late bloomer, but here are a few things I’ve learned:

Don’t be a quitter.

Trust through the fallow spell.

Be diligent and attentive – you may or may not be rewarded.

Love beauty for its own sake.

You can never have too many flowers.

Dad’s Poppies

Slow Evening Drift

It’s a new year, and time to get busy painting! The name for my new body of work (since I like to name things) is Arboles y Agua (Trees and Water). I’m in love with grays lately, as this piece reflects. This one isn’t finished, but I can feel it beginning to come together. 2012 will be a year of many changes for me.   I’ll be spending more time in Texas with my family, especially with my Dad.  And I’ll be saying goodbye to Ojo Sarco this spring – I’ve really loved living here but my circumstances have changed, so I’ll be moving soon – hopefully closer to Taos.  Here is one of my favorite poems about change from William Stafford:

YES
It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen
Or sunshine, love, salvation.
It could, you know. That’s why we wake
and look out – no guarantees in this life.
But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now,
like noon,
like evening.