My First Sun Painting

Growing up, there was a very large painting, the size of a picture window, that hung on the wall of the living room, a window to a faraway world, always there like a friend. Those water reflections looked so real. Was that really tree bark and milkweed? I could see the sun coming across a building that was very different from any buildings I’d ever seen growing up in Alaska. It was as if the people lived in buildings made out of clay! There were shadows around the corner of the fence. How did she do that? From a distance, it looked like a photograph. I liked to step as far back as possible and slowly approach. At what point could I tell that it was made of leaves, bark and moss?

Sun painting. That’s what she called the art form she invented, my great-grandmother who I had never met, or I guess I had met her when I was two years old in Denver. She said sun paintings “get their color from the sun and they look like a painting, I hope.”

I never imagined that I would make my own sun painting. My gifts were verbal, not visual. Yet I always loved to collect nature. Birch bark, fall leaves, lupine, fireweed, rose hips. I would press them into books without any purpose in mind, as if there remained some genetic call to continue collecting a palette. As a young adult, I felt wistful about it. Sun paintings made in Alaska would be so beautiful. What an opportunity! Too bad I had no visual ability.

Age will soften the need to create a masterpiece. In more recent years, I realized that I did want to make one sun painting, if only to learn about the process and to feel what it is like.

The back of my mind worked on the how part for many years. What kind of glue? Rubber cement? No, that didn’t seem right. What surface? Cardboard. Probably. How to frame it? Was there something I needed to know to preserve the colors properly? It seemed beyond my reach.

Pansy’s granddaughter, my mother, loves genealogy. She shared videos, articles and photographs. There was a video that showed Pansy Stockton making a sun painting. I watched and took notes. Breaking the leaves and bark with her hands, dabbing some glue, pressing with her thick fingers. You could see the scene magically appear. It was too easy for her, I sighed. It’s certainly not that easy.

I fell in love with a man born in Albuquerque, New Mexico and one Christmas he took me there. We visited Santa Fe where Pansy had been a well known artist and built a kiva (rounded) adobe home. In one of the art galleries, they had some of her work in the basement. Small pieces, but absolutely amazing. The curator and I kept stepping back and moving slowly forward, marveling at the shadows and shadings. How did she do that with nature!

And we stepped into the sun painting of my childhood. It was of the Mission at Taos. How strange to walk into the painting! Time had changed some things. Now there were huge trees on either side of the front door. Most things were as I had experienced them far away in Alaska as a child.

A few months ago, I began to make a sun painting. Very slowly.

I chose to build it on cardboard. I made sure that it fit into the frame that I wanted to use. I ordered special crafters glue. It worked well and dried clear. I got an exacto knife, but ended up using scissors more than the knife. I used a small thin paintbrush to apply glue with motion. I had a thick paintbrush on hand that I did not use much and a little bowl for water because sometimes it was best to thin the glue. And sometimes my fingers got too sticky, so I needed a way to remove the glue.

I chose a subject familiar to Alaskans: Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. I perused my photographs of the setting, some with and some without bears and fish at the falls. I was concerned about scale and the photographs would help.

The first thing I learned was that you start at the top and build up to the bottom. I hadn’t thought about that before, but it immediately made sense. Gives the depth perspective.

Another thing I learned was that the leaves and bark would move into place like puzzle pieces as if they belonged where they were. I didn’t expect that at all.

I stopped frequently. I would glue a bit, apply pressure with a layer of cardboard topped by heavy books, and check after a few minutes to make sure the top layer of cardboard wasn’t sticking to the sun painting. Pansy used an iron. I used heavy books.

“A lot of stuff, a little glue, considerable pressure and a great big lot of imagination.” That’s what Pansy said when asked how she made her sun paintings.

While it dried and pressed, I would think through the next step. What would I use to make the bank? I stared and stared at the photograph. What could look like that? What about that rocky overhang with the big spruce tree? How was I going to do that? Bark. Gray bark.

And looming in the back of my mind: how was I going to make the bears?

When I collect nature on walks, I tend to collect very colorful leaves, flowers or lichen that catches my eye. I learned that these stand-out, beautiful items are unlikely to be used in a sun painting. The colors need to blend naturally, not stand out, unless there is an intentional group of flowers. I realized it was more about shades, tones and textures as they contrasted with each other.

“I consider texture more important than color in getting my effects,” Pansy said, and now I could understand why. “The general effect of sun painting is much like looking out of a window rather than looking into a frame. There is a three dimensional value not found in painted pictures.”

Birch bark was my good friend in creating the boundaries for the bank. I even used some of the papery parts of the bark for noses and ears on the bears. These papery parts often had black spots, which were great for eyes and noses.

The bodies of the bears were cut out of birch bark and the fur was made of dried fall moss.

So much of the scene was water. Prevalent in King Salmon during the summer, I had cotton grass at the ready. However, if I just put cotton grass on the cardboard, there would be no definition. You wouldn’t be able to see the levels of the falls. And the cotton grass itself was argumentative; it just wanted to blow around everywhere. The small paintbrush came in handy with the cotton grass. I often literally painted it on so that it would have the right shape.

Looking at the photograph, there were underlying colors to the water. If I could find items in nature that made those colors, I could use them as the base and the shape would be defined.

I dried some dark green leaves for this purpose. The effect did not turn out exactly as I had hoped. The color is still wrong to me. It needs to be grayer and bluer. If there is anything I would change, it is finding something else that is not so intensely green to be the base color for the water. However, it did provide a way to shape the layers of falls. I think that you can see upper and lower areas. I hoped that the placement of the bears would help provide that scale as well.

I added some fish. One in a bear’s mouth right at the top of the falls and two fish jumping nearby.

I think it reflects who I am a little, too. I am a detail oriented person, so my version of a sun painting is detailed rather than a broad collage style.

Pansy Stockton was a master. It is difficult to imagine anyone achieving the level of realism that she did. However, I hope someone will and I hope it will be with Alaskan materials and an Alaskan scene.

It sounds trite and expected, but I did feel her presence with me while I was matching the right pieces with the right places. Sometimes there was almost the sense of reprimand: no, not there, there. Or: if you slow down, you won’t tear the leaves. Or: it will work out, put it there. It was probably just my subconscious talking to me, but it felt like her sometimes and it was a warm and powerful feeling to be connected to a great grandmother I never knew.