All Of A Sudden: Virginia Dutton - Interview with Hamptons Hustle

Virginia Dutton captures the chaos, explosive energy, and propensity for pattern witnessed in the natural world and occasionally come across among machinations of man and womankind.  Her work distills the dynamism of the open ocean, the majesty of a breaking wave, and the complex order-within-chaos that abounds in the world around us. Ms. Dutton recently took a moment to discuss her work with Hamptons Hustle.  The interview follows …

HH: Your style seems to fuse energy and art … how do you achieve this in the static medium of painting?

I don’t see art as a static medium.  When emotion is stirred in someone viewing a piece of art is this not the contradiction of static?

As for my art, one will look at the same painting over and over again and find something entirely different within the piece that was never seen before.  It may be years after owning a piece that one sees something that was not there, in their reality.  When one is ready to see what is held in the painting…it will be revealed.

I painted a piece called Spirit Guides in 2008 to pull in guides who have helped me throughout my life.  I “emptied” my thoughts of  how I thought the piece should look and let the guides; energies pick out the colors, medium and material I would paint on, that just happened to be leather. Once finished, I had it framed and hung it in my bedroom.  For years it hung in my room.  Last year I decided to put this piece in my kitchen over my sink.  I decided to change the way I had been viewing it so I hung it “upside down”.  There as plain as day was my horse Whistler who helped me through the nightmare of doctors during my childhood.  Whistler was/is indeed a spirit guide who is still with me.  Preferably I sign my work on the back of the painting to allow hanging in all directions without a standard position.

Back to the question of “how do you achieve this…” and the answer is I don’t know.  Once I let go of it looking a particular way, the art seems to flow through me fusing the energy and art.

HH: Who are some of your influences?

There are many people who have influenced me throughout my life.  As for influences in the artistic arena; Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings made a great impression on me as I wanted to touch them.  Close my eyes and feel how he painted, literally.  It was all I could do to stop from putting my hand on Van Gogh’s painting to feel where one stoke started and ended.  (The security guards had no problem keeping me from touching the paintings.).  At the age of fifteen, I was told that I would be blind in a year from diabetic retinopathy by a specialist at Johns’ Hopkins Hospital.   I started to feel how colors felt.  Another conversation….

Kelly Powers, the psychic who helped the police find Ted Bundy was a great influence of mine.  He taught me once you know the technique, nothing is impossible.  On his suggestion I started painting the colors I saw during my healing work.

Gregory Dillon is the man who had me “do” rather than talk about what I “could” do.

HH:  In what schools of art, if any, do you situate yourself?

My work is abstract but I do not situate myself in a school of art.  Rebellion, deviating from the customary or how to seal canvas with balance are not the focus of my art.  Painting pictures to be an abstraction is not my intention.  I paint showing the way in which I see energy flowing and in turn, relaying what I see in energy.

HH: You mention how your Blood Work series came about with a degree of happenstance or serendipitous synchronicity.  What are some of your more routine creative practices?  Do you have any rituals or set practices that help you get your creative juices flowing.

Synchronicity is my favorite word as I don’t believe in coincidence.  Was the Blood Work happenstance?  I think it was more a need for me to stay in life and therefore the opportunity presented itself in the way of my glucose testing, pricked finger drop of blood.  That is along the lines of my creative process, a need to paint.  Before I started answering these questions, I felt the need to paint and get connected to the art.  Any excuse to paint and I will use it!

The practice of Kahuna healing is how I started painting; I would pull in a person’s energy and colors would appear.  Years later I started painting the colors.  Life is made up of energy so I continue the “pulling in” of energy and paint what comes to me.  In order to do this I need to clear out what I believe, what my brain thinks should be and become empty; no thoughts.  Funny how my brain keeps trying to tell me what colors I should use or not to use…a force outside of my understanding of self always wins.  If my brain wins, the painting lacks the vibrancy it would have had if I had only gotten out of the way. (No, I’m not schizophrenic but I have discussed this with a professional!).

Music is a plus for the creative process.

Read the entire article at Hamptons Hustle.