Press
Striking images: Artist Lucy Finch draws on parallels between rattlesnakes and strong women
"Albuquerque Journal"
Albuquerque, NM
Sunday, Sept 15, 2024
When Lucy Finch moved to Las Vegas, New Mexico, in 2021, the Missouri-born artist had never lived around rattlesnakes.
She decided to research them in the hopes that it would quell her fears. Instead, she found parallels to her own life that mushroomed into a series.
“The way people were treating rattlesnakes was similar to the way people treat women in our society,” Finch said. “As a woman, I have continually felt all kinds of unjustified anger; ‘I just say hello to you and you’re on the attack.’ People lash out.”
The project’s inspiration came from a PBS story about a “Rattlesnake Roundup.” “I replaced the snake-related words with words about strong women and I think it reads the same,” Finch said. For example, “Strong women have long struck terror in many people — the unfortunate result of this fear is that some people routinely kill any strong woman they encounter, even those who pose no threat.”
That snake investigation evolved into a series she calls “Rattlesnakes,” a collection of 13 portraits of strong New Mexico women, now on view at Gallery OneSixSix in Las Vegas, New Mexico, through Oct. 5.
Even in contemporary art, some artists claim they love the female form, but then they cut the head off, Finch said.
“And when you kill rattlesnakes, you behead them,” she added.
So the artist decided to paint pastel portraits of strong women in northern New Mexico, relying on word-of-mouth to source them. As she worked at her easel, Finch’s subjects opened up, telling her of the heartache in their life stories.
Some had received death threats, many were abused during childhood and/or marriage. One awoke to her husband trying to kill her. “To have these really difficult lives and come out smiling again,” Finch said, “you have to choose how to manage it.
“So often these women got married right after high school and this person was not a good fit,” she added.
Some left their marriages, raised their kids alone and returned to school to develop careers. The women posed from two to four times. Finch spent about a month on each portrait.
“Evelyn” radiated joy in her 70s. Born and raised in Wagon Mound, she had lived a challenging life through a career in social work.“She is in love with life,” Finch said. “She lived through all this and came out the other side. Part of it is being retired; your life can slow down a bit. She has dedicated her retirement to doing the things she loves with the people she loves.”
“Laureen” was “born into heartache,” the artist said.
“She had a really abusive household. Her father and his sisters showed her what kindness was. She found her inner strength and was able to break away from the abuse, and has dedicated her life to helping people break away from their abuse. She was a teacher and she fought for her students.”
“Yolanda” never had a typical career. She started out performing volunteer work and discovered she was an excellent community organizer, Finch said.
A onetime advertising designer, Finch took up painting just five years ago when she was sailing up the Inside Passage on the way to Alaska.“When I was up there, I met a woman willing to teach me techniques that date back to the Renaissance,” she said. “Before I met her, my stuff looked cartoonish.”
Today she supports herself by performing remote data entry, teaching belly dancing, and walking dogs, she said.
“I’m part of the gig economy.”
‘Rattlesnakes’ celebrates NM’s resilient women
"The Optic"
Las Vegas, NM
Friday, November 24, 2023
For the most part, they are the unseen, the ones who don’t appear in the chronicles of history. They are not front and center.
But they are the ones Las Vegas-based artist Lucy Finch finds fascinating: the resilient women of northeastern New Mexico.
“I want to celebrate the women who are doing amazing work and give them a chance to be seen and heard,” Finch said of her latest project, Rattlesnakes.
“I’m drawn to women who have lived full lives–ones rich with loves, losses, grief, joy, pain and everything in between,” Finch said. She’s particularly interested in mature women who have wisdom to share after surviving heartbreak, betrayal, medical issues, discrimination, and more. “Beauty exists in all ages and shines brightest in women who have found their way back to happiness after tragedy.”
Rattlesnakes is an ongoing series of soft pastel portraits of women born and raised in northeastern New Mexico. The series’ title was taken from an excerpt from a PBS Nature episode on the venomous snake: “Rattlesnakes have long struck terror in many people — the unfortunate result of this fear is that some people routinely kill any rattlesnake they encounter, even those that pose no threat.”
“I replaced the word ‘rattlesnake’ in the article with ‘strong women’ and voila, it read the same. It was an experiment to see if strong women have any relationship to how rattlesnakes are seen and managed in society, and they do,” Finch said.
“The women in the series are easy going until they’re stepped on and then they stand up for themselves and rattle,” Finch said adding, “and that’s when you need to take a step back.”
In the past year and a half Finch has completed seven paintings in the series and an eighth is almost finished. One painting takes approximately a month to complete. Each painting’s subject, including a retired police officer, an educator, a past town councilwoman, and animal welfare advocate, address the viewer with a confident, knowing gaze. In unflinching honesty, each shoulder-length portrait is bare, reflecting an inner strength unprejudiced by clothing or jewelry.
“To me one of the greatest gifts you can give another person is to take the time to see, hear, and understand them,” Finch said.
Finch plays upon the asymmetrical nature of the human face, painting a different emotion on each half, using the interaction of the two to create a more complete story of the person.
“I see someone who has survived difficult circumstances and tap into the women’s whole experience, and not just who they are today,” Finch said.
For Rattlesnakes Finch spends time with each woman, face to face in her studio studying their faces and expressions as they talk as she digs deep to explore their unique story. She paints as they talk and takes a few reference photos to use if the model can’t return for several days or weeks. Trained to work from observation and memory, Finch uses the photos to fill in the gaps but the primary work comes from painting with the model in person.
“I love doing this style of art because it forces me to slow down and see the world around me, appreciating the details,” Finch said. “To me, in a photograph, the camera has already done the work of compressing three dimensions into two. It can miss a lot of the details seen by the human eye.”
Finch said she hopes to complete three to five more paintings for the series and then exhibit them in Las Vegas with a large opening reception party to celebrate the women in the portraits.
“This project started with a desire to celebrate the strong women in this community, and I can’t think of a better way to do that than holding a show in town where the models’ friends and relatives have an opportunity to recognize the accomplishments of these women,” Finch said. “Many of the women I’ve painted think they haven’t done anything extraordinary, but I see them as resilient survivors who have done something incredibly challenging: they have held onto their ability to be kind and show compassion to their families and community through strikingly difficult times. Not everyone can do that.”
Finch’s work has been included in several exhibitions, including the New Mexico Painters’ Exhibition at New Mexico Highlands, the National Pastel Painting Exhibition in Taos, and at the Los Alamos Arts Council. Her artwork is online at www.mosstudiocr.com. Women born and raised in Las Vegas / Mora who are over 40 and are willing to pose for a portrait can contact Finch at mosstudiocr@gmail.com.