Eve Bigaj

Family of Three

I painted Family of Three outdoors, beneath two towering saguaros suggesting a couple with infant (a taller parent holding a child on their back and a shorter parent reaching their arm out toward the baby — that’s my interpretation, anyway). I had hauled the 48”x36” canvas into the desert, only to find that I had left my bag of carefully selected brushes at home. So I made the piece with a couple of palette knives, a rag, and the occasional (gloved) finger. In the end, the “imperfect” tools, especially the palette knife, allowed me to represent the space the saguaros carved in my psyche with what is, I hope, a vibrant immediacy.

Beauty & Pain

Something I often ask my drawings, once I’ve answered the basic questions of light, shadow, and proportions, is “Does this hurt in the right way?” Is there a trace of the rawness of a world equally dense with beauty and pain, awe and ache? Or is this the self-satisfied mirage of a tortured artist — or, conversely, the false ideal of a light which casts no shadows? Something about the lumpy waning moon, the buds like blossoming pins in a voodoo doll, and the clumsy turquoise verticals at the bottom of the sky seemed to strike the right balance. And the motif of the spiraling, galactic sky recurs in my work – a persistent and unresolved cipher bubbling up from my subconscious.

Still Alive

An artist friend suggested we stop and draw this supine resident of Saguaro National Park – a real survivor, miraculously flushed a healthy green. I actually wasn't too excited by the subject at first, but I dug up a lot of meaning in it – including traces of that day's conversation with an elderly friend, who had just undergone serious surgery and was grappling with the challenges of old age.