Deep in the heart of Texas, drowsing placidly in the prairie sun, is that famous symbol of last-stand courage - the Alamo. Nearby, a few blocks up the street, in the little arts and crafts community of La Villita, artist Margaret Putnam paints every day.
Although paralyzed from the waist down and stricken with an incurable disease, she continues to produce exquisite, expressive pictures filled with radiant colors and undefined joy, pictures which must be viewed as the triumph of art over life.
"I paint seven days a week because there is nothing I'd rather do. It's such a delight. Sometimes, I feel like I'm still a child, playing with colors," she says happily.
But at seventy-two, and confined to a wheelchair, Margaret Putnam is neither playing with colors, nor is she a child. She is a remarkable woman, a talented artist, and, in the real spirit of the Alamo, she represents true Texas grit.
Margaret had always liked painting a big picture. Her strokes were broad, her colors bold, her paintings powerful and expressive. Her 18-by-7-1/2 foot mural at the top of the San Antonio Hilton Hotel is an example of the size she was comfortable with. An ambitious project, the mural traces epochs and events in Spanish history; then centers of Ferdinand, Isabella, and Columbus; and ends with the launch of Spanish explorers to our continent in search of the Seven Cities of Gold.
"It took me a year to finish it," she remembers. "But I liked working on something so grand in scope and big in size."
That was twenty-eight years ago. Today, she paints on narrow strips of paper, fractions of the canvases she once managed. Stricken with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease often compared with polio, and one that kills through slow paralysis, Margaret may have been forced to modify the size and style of her paintings, but not her creative enthusiasm. She remains undaunted, and the strength of her artistic vision propels her forward.
Some years ago, when Margaret worked on large canvases and painted mainly in oils, she also experimented with combining watercolors and a wax-resist technique usually associated with the creation of batik. She has refined this combination process and employs it today to create her unusual pictures. "We call it the Putnam Technique," says Nicola Bushmill, one of the artist's devoted art students and helpers at her studio and shop, Artworks Pallisado.
Margaret paints figures and scenes on narrow strips of handmade paper which are then treated with wax. These waxed watercolors are partially scored, cut with a knife, and rubbed with dye or more paint. The wax is hand-removed with heat, and in the process colors meld and change, and the paper wears thin and appears to age. The pieces become brittle and sometimes fragment. Margaret then meticulously assembles a picture of the pieces of people, places, and things, working - as one reviewer noted - with the intensity of a watchmaker. The fragments are shifted, aligned, overlapped, layered, and repainted until she feels she has captured the essence of her vision. She may add gold leaf or Japanese tea paper. The result looks delicate, like old parchment or an antique scroll
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