The mixed media piece, Observateur was completed in Colorado the year before I moved back to California. I leave it open to viewers of this art piece how to interpret it. However, this is what I was thinking: The light color and texture represents the arid climate. I have one figure who is observing the scene and there are hints of fire to come. In the arid Colorado climate, my skin was dry. When I made a business trip to New Orleans, my skin immediately started glowing with happiness in the hot humid air. One summer when the town of Beulah, where I lived ran completely out of water. Water was trucked into the town. We all gathered by the post office to get our water supply for a couple of days. Somehow living there at that time, it did not seem unusual. I learned to heat water in the sun in a camping shower container and then attach it to the shower head in the bathroom. It made quite a successful shower.
Fire danger became our worst fear. Fairly often in the summer of 2005, I could see and smell smoke.
One morning as I was in the kitchen gazing out at the foothills and admiring the trees, the birds were going absolutely crazy. They were flying in circles and squawking and squawking, I had never seen birds behave that way. A few hours later, I got a call that everyone was to evacuate due to extreme fire danger. Aha. The birds are much more observant than we humans. Evacuate. What can I take, I have so much of my own artwork from the early collages to the beginning explorations into mixed media. Then I packed up the car with necessities, 2 old family photo albums and an enormous sack of worries. The house was for sale at that time as my return to California was planned.
My observations started when I was a toddler. I remember taking a long time to observe things, people, place and objects. How 2 or 3 children in a family may resemble one another or practically not at all. In my immediate family, I look like my father while my brother and sister look like my mother. All of us felt fine with what we inherited from our parents. Both parents were kind, thoughtful, and encouraging. That was especially important for my sister and I since at that time we were thought of as the second sex. We still have a long way to go the male-female equality issues in our country and even farther with racial equality. Though I looked more like my father, I had the energy and stamina of my mother.
Coley Thomson Wedding 1935 
Thomson Siblings 2011 
Lenore Coley 1935
As with much of what I post all of these artworks are in either private or corporate collections.