Pansy RePass Stockton
“Pansy Stockton is the originator and perfector of sun paintings, those three-dimensional-effect creations made up of thousands and thousands of infinitesimal bits of floss and moss, pieces of bark, feathers, seaweed, and other ingredients,” wrote Albuquerque Journal correspondent C. Haines Comfort in 1956.
Famous in her lifetime, she made five movie shorts about her unusual occupation. They had wide distribution as short films shown prior to main features in movie theaters throughout the country. She was also featured on the television show “This is Your Life” in 1953.
One of her sun paintings hung in the White House while Eleanor Roosevelt was first lady. Another was owned by the Duke of Windsor in England during the short time he was king. Constantly busy and in demand throughout her career, she had exhibitions internationally in Paris, London, and Vienna, and nationally to include New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, Orange, Denver, Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque. She estimated that every home in Aruba must have one of her sun paintings on its walls due to the number she was commissioned to make for the island’s residents. For nearly sixty years, from 1916 to 1972, she made over five thousand sun paintings, most of scenes in New Mexico, the state she loved.
Pansy Cornelia Repass was born on March 31, 1895 in El Dorado Springs, Missouri and grew up traveling all over Colorado to finally settle in Eldorado Springs, Colorado at the Grand View Hotel, run by her parents.
“I’ve painted all my life,” Pansy said on “This is Your Life.” “Mother said she thought I was born with a paintbrush in each hand.”
At age nine, she won her first adult art competition with an oil painting.
Always heavy set, she was a lonely child and took the teasing for being “fat” very hard. She found solace in the beauty of Colorado where nature and imaginary “little people” were her friends. The genesis of sun paintings were the boats, playgrounds, parks, swings, dresses, and cliff dwellings she made for her “little people.”
Pansy also created numerous oil, watercolor, and acrylic paintings. She studied the palette knife painting technique and found many of the ideas useful in the application of textured materials. She began to use nature in her art when she realized that the palette of paint was limiting and the palette of nature was endless.
She made her first sun painting as a child, claiming that it was awful, but she learned enough that her second was not. 1916 was the year she first sold a sun painting to the President of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company for the biggest $25 of her life.
“The general effect of sun painting,” Pansy wrote in a speech to World War II veterans, “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. The texture of the material gives a whole new field of possibilities. I consider texture more important than color in getting my effects. All pieces are cemented to a soft paper board and pressed into the surface with heavy weights. When people ask, ‘How are your sun paintings made?’ I say, ‘a lot of stuff, a little glue, considerable pressure, and a great big lot of imagination.’ The name sun painting is one of my own coinage. It sounds primitive like sun temple or sand paintings, but it means simply that they get their color from the sun and look like a painting, I hope.”
She married poet, radio announcer, inventor, teacher, and principal Roscoe Stockton in 1918. They had two children together: Oakley Stockton and Paul Stockton. They lived in Denver, Colorado. Pansy was a founding member of the Denver Artists Guild in 1928.
In 1936, she was adopted into the Oglala Lakota tribe in thanks for interceding on their behalf to help preserve their land and rights. She was often seen wearing traditional Lakota clothing and would participate in parades and dances. Her tribal name was given to her by the Native American dancer Charles Eagle Plume: “Wanashta Wastaywin,” which means “Flower that Beautifies the Earth.”
Pansy gave lectures on “Customs and Costumes of American Indians” and brought dolls with her in a Native American basket to use as illustrations during the talks. She referred to Native Americans as “First Americans.”
In the late 1930s, Pansy began to spend most of her time in Santa Fe, New Mexico, living there permanently by 1942. She built an adobe kiva with her own hands at artist Fremont Ellis’ San Sebastian Ranch ten miles south of Santa Fe. The resident artists would often have all night sessions of music in Pansy’s kiva. Later, she built an adobe home with a kiva along Acequia Madre, which became a key stop for dignitaries visiting Santa Fe. She was very active in the Santa Fe community, singing at Santa Fe Opera and March of Dime charity events, acting as the Mae West style lead in plays, providing costuming and make-up for parades and festivals, serving as one of the judges for the Miss New Mexico pageant in 1958, performing Hawaiian hula dances, and even creating a burro should the occasion call for one. Her friend Gustave Baumann made the stamp for the back of her sun paintings.
In 1950, she married Howard Fatheree, an army captain from Texas.
In 1953, Ralph Edwards surprised her on live television with “This is Your Life.” On the show, the Governor of New Mexico proclaimed Pansy Stockton Sunshine Day on March 31.
Governor Edwin Mechem wrote: “Your sun paintings of New Mexico scenes faithfully portray the beauty that God gave our Land of Enchantment. In recognition of the honor which you bring our state, I hereby proclaim that of the 340 days of New Mexico sunshine each year, the sunniest of them all shall hereafter be known as Pansy Stockton Sunshine Day in New Mexico.”
She died on February 20, 1972. Following Pansy’s instructions, her two sons flew her remains over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to reside where she looked every day from her art studio.
Her work continues to be displayed, sold, and enjoyed throughout the world today.
Pansy Stockton in the replica of an old kiva at Nambé that she built herself, which was home to her Kachina doll and Native art collections. The Oglala Lakota gave Pansy a beaded crown decorated with feathers, porcupine quills and her own hair. One hundred ninety shin bones of deer were used to make the breastplate that is worn over the white fringed and beaded buckskin dress that Pansy would wear on ceremonial occasions. She had a Zuni necklace of flying birds that was carved from pale pink shell and interlaced with black obsidian beads. Photograph of unknown origin, copy part of the Nancy Bernhardt Collection.
“I was in second grade at Mountain School in the early 1950’s when I visited the Santa Fe studio of Pansy Stockton. She was so impressive; her style was different than anyone I knew and better than most, and her studio was a feast for the eyes. For example, rather than pile her yarns together, she grouped them by colors in containers, which was as visually interesting as the unusual thought behind her orderly plan. Purples with greens and turquoise, hot pink with scarlet and coral, and whites with whatever was left. I remember telling Miss. Stockton that when I grew up I wanted to be just like her. She gave me incredible advice which I have shared with hundreds of other children throughout my life: The secret to making my childhood dreams materialize was simply to remember them! So many grown-ups don’t. Pansy Stockton also suggested that I keep a diary, which I do to this day.”
Sara Eyestone, Artist and Art Curator at La Posada in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Pansy with her sons Oak and Paul. Part of the Nancy Bernhardt Collection.
Pansy would sun paint with her toes because it gave her better perspective. Part of the Nancy Bernhardt Collection.
“Back of these sun paintings is the artist, Pansy Stockton, a personality as warm, vital, and sun happy as the landscapes she captures,” wrote Dorothy L. Pillsbury in her article “Sun Painter of Santa Fe” in the April 1947 issue of The Desert Magazine.
In Santa Fe, Pansy sang at events and acted in plays.
