Diana Greene Winston-Salem Monthly November 2009 Artist in Residence: Hilda Spain-Owen

When you look at Hilda Spain-Owen's grandly exuberant paintings, the idea of death seems about a million miles away. There's so much color, so much light. However, in a subliminal way death is right there - evident in each completed canvas. About ten years ago, Spain-Owen began thinking seriously about her own death, and that, in turn, prompted the Winston-Salem artist to get serious about her own art.

"I realized I'd been asking the wrong question," she explains. "Instead of wondering what I should do, I asked myself what would I regret not doing. The word that spelled out like a headline was A-R-T."

Armed with her answer, Spain-Owen began working with an intensity equal to the word mortality. She no longer put her art supplies away in a closet like a board game after the company goes home. She parked her studio in the middle of her living room. She got busy. She painted big.

These days two North Carolina galleries represent her award-winning work. In addition, commissions roll in, primarily from people living along the east coast. She's in high demand for her dog paintings. However, to say that Spain-Owen is a dog painter is a little like saying Cezanne was a fruit painter; it demeans the work, a point not lost on this artist.

"When people say, 'It's dog art, and, oh how cute,' you just want to cut your throat," Spain-Owen says with good-natured candor.

Just study the elegant lines and dramatic immediacy of her work Tag Team, and it's apparent that the work transcends the literal subject of two Whippets playing ball. There's a tension that goes beyond wondering which dog will get the ball. The movement of her colors, the dogs' physicality, the play of shadow and light all build a visceral energy that draws the viewer into an unresolved story.

"I like to capture a moment in time," Spain-Owen says. "I like to push everything forward, to achieve weight, intensity, to have the dogs in the forefront so they're right up in your face."

Spain-Owen's two Whippets are her constant subjects. They're the equivalent of photographer William Wegman's Weimaraners. The dogs are thin, muscular, and nearly hairless, making their anatomy intriguingly apparent. The form of their legs, heads, backs, and bellies is tautly revealed and suggestively recorded in these canvases that the artist wraps around each frame, every edge painted, every inch a part of the whole.

With little to no foreground in her paintings, the background provides a suggestive counterpoint to the subjects' realism. Spain-Owen creates abstract color fields that blend together into a horizontal line that grounds each portrait in space. She layers the acrylic paint using a palette knife. It's a method that allows her to "paint big" and build the paintings' surface, creating a textured depth. Asked how many layers are on the painting, she laughs. "About a million, not to put too fine a point on it."

Spain-Owen says the elements surrounding the subject are most demanding because there's "no clear direction" and that means working instinctively. "I don't paint a scene," she says, "I like my work to be about questions. I like there to be a twist."

In her self-portrait Telling Moments the mood and meaning of the work is open for interpretation. The hand in front of the woman's face conceals just enough detail to invite mystery. Is she shielding a laugh or hiding a sorrow? Is she secretive or sly? Whatever the answer, it's a significant piece to the artist given that it hangs on the wall above her office desk.

"The hardest moment" in creation, Spain-Owen says, "is when idea meets execution. " Once started, she works intensively, steps back and resumes the process. And always there is that final moment, that final push, once the painting seems completed. "I always come back to it again and try to make it great," she says. "I try to always go beyond my own expectations."

When did you realize you were going to live a creative life?

My painting roots began when I was five years old. I was lying on the floor coloring and my father said, "My land, can't she color?"

Where do you find your inspiration?

I’m very visual. I see everything as art, even a tree trunk.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?

I go to art galleries. I look at art magazines. What I get out of it is that we're all in this together. I also never work with a blank canvas. I pick some color to cover the canvas and you may never see it. It's like I’m holding my own hand.

What do you think of failure?

I learn more when I absorb it rather than when I laugh it off. The temptation to laugh it off or say ces't la vie may be my public reaction, but I do try to absorb it.

What quality do you admire in other artists?

Output. I admire artists who tell a story and produce a lot of work at the same time.

Which artists do you most admire?

Van Gogh because he wasn't appreciated and he kept on painting. He painted what he saw, and he painted for his own pleasure. I love the drama in his painting that comes through direction and flow and intensity.

What would surprise people about you?

I was born in a little house by the side of the road that had no running water. The house was between Bath and Belhaven, North Carolina.