Resolute

Resolute
oil on panel
24 x 18 inches
This item is unframed.

I want to be a mountain.
Live oak limbs and black gum roots.

I want a base, ample and unshakable.
Thick and steady. Storm-ready.
Resolute.
 - L.E. BOWMAN

BUY THE ART

I grew up powerless in the shadows of the powerful. Voiceless though I raised the alarm, invisible though I tried very hard to be seen. It was a bit like standing at the base of a mountain. Well, more like standing at the base of a mountain abutting the ocean, where sneaker waves crashed against one side of me, and the cliff face loomed in a straight vertical against the other side. It is, in real life, a formula for drowning.

I never wanted to be the sea, with its unpredictable temperament and grabbiness. I wanted to be the mountain - unshakable and storm-ready. Perhaps that is why standing on top of some pinnacle at the end of hours of hiking feels both triumphant and holy.

This upbringing of mine and the subsequent lifetime accumulation of survival skills (used awkwardly and inelegantly) somehow became the very fuel needed for writing MONSTROUS.

Rather than tell you the story of writing the book (the pages, the rewrites, the illustrations and hours and months and so on), I will instead share an except from the book, which perhaps tells it better.

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BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR (but do keep wishing)

IN A NONDESCRIPT midwestern town somewhere in the early
1970’s, a middle-schooler sat at a desk in geography class writing
short horror stories. The instructor had a monotonous voice and
wore his sweater-vests inside-out, so writing was the way to stay alert,
as well as a way to delight classmates when the stories were passed
from desk to desk. The middle-school girl had unruly dark hair, thick
glasses, bumps on her face and hairy legs. Was she a witch? If only. A
few spells might have worked against the monsters at home. In the
meantime, writing horror stories made the real horrors seem somehow less.

Fifty years later (FIFTY YEARS!) the (now grown) girl receives a
missive from a magical being inviting her to write and illustrate a
book. She raises an eyebrow, waiting for the catch, but instead finds
the door opened to a world outside of the box,
rules abandoned, caution thrown to the wind—just waiting for her.
WHERE DO I SIGN?,
she yells, and a contract lands in her lap.
Fifteen months, 60 illustrations and a dozen stories later, a book is
born under the practiced and expert eye of the magical being (who
happens to be an enchantress and book doula).
Somewhere in the time loop, a
middle-schooler is screaming with
joy, jumping on her desk and shouting
TAKE THAT, YOU FUCKING MONSTERS!
She accepts detention for swearing and marches off
to gleefully serve her time.

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About the art: beginning with an old oil painting on a flat panel, I roughed in a basic mountainous scene with bold strokes of oil paint and a brush. Drawing on our hikes along the rugged Oregon coast, where waves crash ominously against tall vertical cliffs and rocks, but without using a reference photo, a worked with big shapes and broad brush strokes. This piece took form over five weeks, where drying time between layers allowed me to come back in and build color layers while scraping back enough to let the underpainting peek through.  Finishing with a palette knife to add rough highlights and whitecaps to the waves, and a wet brush through the sky to drag paint over the mountaintops.

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​View the blog on YouTube!

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​This week's bonus malarkey is the book announcement video!  A quick animation including one of the characters from MONSTROUS.