Darby Gordon

                                                                   by Aubrilynn

This week, we also met up with Darby Gordon, a mixed media artist hailing from Brunswick, Georgia. A lively woman that has found a new home in the Salt Lake valley, living with her husband and her “fur-baby”, Sela. Darby has found new inspiration in the beautiful scenery of Utah, as even the first time she made the drive from Brunswick to Salt Lake, she was awestruck by the arches of the south and the mountains of the north.

Mixed media, for her, includes everything from paint and photography to poetry and found-objects. Darby finds quite a bit of her inspiration through nature, particularly favoring Autumn. She uses photographs and found-objects taken from hikes and adventures through different locations such as Point Lobos, CA, and even our own Millcreek Canyon (where she recently sustained an injury, AKA broke her foot).

Using patience and technique, she learned different forms of art through various classes. Darby began her journey to art as a young child. To this day, she still uses the techniques she learned in her first classes. She cites self-discovery as one of her biggest inspirations, and finds herself having new epiphanies and new understandings of life.

The Interview:

Kita: Firstly, a lot of people don’t really know what mixed media is. How would you describe it?

Darby: It’s everything. It’s photography, it’s acrylics, it’s found-objects, I mean, anything that you want to put in it. Which, you know, is kind of me.

Kita: Did you have to learn all these different skills to make it work?

Darby: Well, no, a lot of it’s kind of automatic. You know, obviously as you go along, you decide you want to add things in and you want to learn new things, but you are kind of just led. It’s very interesting. And it’s so wide open. You can do anything.

Kita: So do you have a particular media or medium that you like best?

Darby: I love acrylics. That’s probably mostly because acrylics dry fast, and patience is not one of my virtues. I’m not a person that wants to use oil paint and wait til tomorrow to keep going.
I want to get onto the next step. I also like to use photography. Whether it be a base and I’m painting over it, or just adding things on top of it, or hand coloring my own photography, you know, making a black and white and hand coloring. Because, having not grown up here, I’ve got all these photos of all these new things. I didn’t grow up with seasons, so I have all these photos of snow and it’s still new and wonderful to me. And I can take that, and have it be an experience for that day and I can use it in my art.

Kita: When you draw over your photographs, do you take a lot of creative license with that, or do you stick to pretty much whatever you’re seeing?

Darby: Well, it depends. I’ve done different things. I did one where it was a photo of a palm tree on a beach, and the sun was shining on some of the leaves. And that was so intricate. I sat there and put that sun back on those leaves. So that was pretty much making it be what it would appear as a photograph. But then, I had a photo I did of a tree in Point Lobos, in California, and it had this orange stuff growing all over it. Orange, on a tree. And the tree was going up like two arms. So it looked like a yoga pose, and then with that orange stuff growing on it. The only thing I did to it was that I painted over the background so that all you see is the tree. But people are going to see that tree, and see that orange and think, “Well, why’d she paint this orange on there?”, but I didn’t. And I took some found objects, some bark, and some stones and different things and added to that.

Kita: So, you’ve been talking a lot about nature, I’m gonna go ahead and guess that’s a big inspiration?

Darby: It is! Once again, it just lends itself. I mean, I’m out here experiencing all these new landscapes and having all these new experiences, and just having seasons. I lived in Southeast Georgia for thirty-seven years, and we didn’t have snow, we didn’t have the leaves changing. It was either winter, and your grass was dead, or we’d have summer, which was so hot you’d want to die. And it was humid, which was so uncomfortable. I love having all these distinct seasons, so very inspiring. Fall is my favorite. So many colors.

Kita: So, Utah has been pretty good for you as far as art goes?

Darby: Yeah! It’s been pretty inspiring! Another thing that happened once I moved out here is that I found poetry. Or maybe poetry found me. I was in a bookstore, waiting on a friend to check out, and I just picked up a book. I turned to Mary Oliver’s “The Journey”, and it was me. It was in a book called “Ten Poems to Change Your Life”. It’s a compilation put together by Roger Housden, and he put ten poems in there and he wrote essays with them. It really did change my life. I know it sounds corny, but it did. So, you know, I wrote poetry subsequently. I’ve incorporated some of my poetry into my art.

Kita: Nice! So what are your poems about?

Darby: About me. About finding me. I think you go through your twenties, and it’s all just a blur. And then, your thirties, you’re starting to figure things out, but you’re not quite there, and then forty hits. And i think you either have this crisis everyone talks about, or you have some epiphany. And I feel like I had an epiphany. So, it’s a lot of self discovery. And it’s a lot about me.

Kita: So you started that when you moved out here, and that was how many years ago?

Darby: It’s six years ago this June.

Kita: How long ago did you start doing your mixed media art?

Darby: It all kind of started out here. I guess, a little background… I had lived in my home town for thirty-seven years, and I got a divorce, and I had worked for my ex-husbands company. So when the divorce happened, I had to reinvent everything. I had to come up with a place to live, a job, a life. So I came out here for work and I really had to do all this self-discovery. It was really sink or swim. The art just started happening. I don’t know, it really surprised me. I had taken acrylics as a child, a very young child, and I had done scrapbooking as a kid, and I’ve always loved photography. I always had a camera. I was the last child, so call me spoiled, but always! I was always taking photos of everything. So, there’s always been that undercurrent. But coming out here, it really started to happen, and I started to put these things together. I hate to discount my scrap booking by not calling it art. I did, for awhile, put it in the background and say, “This is not my art, this is just something I do”, and I stepped away from it for awhile. But, most of my family is deceased, both my parents died when I was young, and I’ve even lost a sister, and I really think, being the last child and being so much younger than my siblings, I was always interested in the family stories. I would sit down with the big box of photos of my mother and I just  can’t stress enough how important those stories are. Especially after you lose everybody. I would have loved for my mother to have been a scrapbooker. Wouldn’t that be great? She’s been gone a couple of decades, but I could have these books, and her handwriting, and her thoughts and her take on all the events. Luckily, I was very interested in it as a child. So I do have a lot of the stories as an oral history. I just think that’s made it very important to me to do those books. So I think scrapbooking is a very important thing.

Kita: So at point would say you that you included mixed media into that art?

Darby: Well, you know, subtly it happened just learning different techniques and going to conventions and going to scrapbooking clubs and stamp clubs and having friends that had a shared interest. I had a really big community of that in Brunswick, and I thought, when I moved out here, that I would find that here too. So many of the scrapbooking companies are Utah based, so I thought I would be going to the scrapbooking motherland. But people don’t do it as a social activity out here, which I couldn’t believe, and I still can’t believe, six years down the road. I’m just looking for my tribe. So I did learn a lot that way. I also think some of it is just intrinsically a part of you, and part of this whole self-discovery thing has been for me to realize that there have been a lot of artists in my family. My nephew’s an artist, my niece can draw anything, my sister that is deceased- any kind of art. Music, she could paint, or draw. And my dad was the same. He could draw or paint anything. He could sing too. My mother was a decorator. So I think your ancestors, whether you like it or not, are a part of you. And I’ve gotten a lot of comfort from that, finding those people in me. I’m me, but they influence me. My aunt also does amazing water colors.

Kita: Would you say if you weren’t doing this kind of art, would you still be doing art?

Darby: Something, yes.

Kita: What do you think you would do?

Darby: Well, since I’m so dimensional, giving sculpture a try might be a good thing.

Kita: Would you say that those closest to you are supportive?

Darby: Oh very. I live with an artist. He’s a poet, a writer, a musician, a photographer. Beyond supportive. My husband is my biggest fan. Even talking to my nieces and nephew has shown them to be just very supportive. I think they are starting to come along in age and recognize the gifts we have been given in our family. And all my friends too.

Kita: So do you think you’d ever want to move into a different sort of art?

Darby: I definitely want to take some classes and sharpen my skills, and you know, that might lead me in a totally different direction. I’m hoping it will lead me into a new place.

Kita: Now that you are in Utah, and you’ve really built a life for yourself here, with a house and husband and friends, is this what you are hoping to do full time?

Darby: That is the plan. I actually quit my day job. And I am trying to turn this into my bread and butter. Not sure what it’s going to look like yet. As you said, I did get married, so I quit my job, then I had the wedding, then you get side tracked, and then of course, in July, I broke my foot, so I’m on a knee scooter. I can’t sit very long without pain, so I have not been making a whole lot of art lately. And it makes me sad. I’ve tried to sit down at my desk and do some work, and I really haven’t been able to pull it off. With three months of no walking, you know, maybe by Halloween, I’ll be able to really get back into gear. I’m hoping.

Kita: Because of the broken foot, have you been writing more lately?

Darby: No, I have found that I have a lot of time to think and you would think that would just be perfect, a great time for inspiration. But it’s really been uninspiring. I just put a lot of energy into getting better.

Kita: Definitely ready for this to be done?

Darby: Yes, oh yes.

Kita: Do you have a lot of ideas to jump into once you’re healed?

Darby: Oh yes, I do. And I really had been on a creative tangent this summer before the accident, so I also have some ideas left from that time period. They’re pretty fertile. And I need to finish some series. I have been continuing to get some good ideas, though. Maybe it’ll be a lot of stuff about feet and dancing. Those are kind of my dreams right now. And driving. Can’t drive because it’s my right foot. That’s been the worst part!

Kita: With scrapbooking there’s really only so many places you can go because it’s based on your memories, and your way of documenting them. So with mixed media, was there a specific direction you really wanted to go with it?

Darby: It wasn’t necessarily a direction I wanted to go in, but it did go in a lot of different directions. I’ve been reading a lot of nature based psychology, and since my husband is a psychologist, a lot of that will come in through osmosis, but just different things and a lot of what I’ve been reading would come creeping in. But I really did explore some aspects of myself in my art.

Kita: On a more technical level, how long does a normal piece take?

Darby: I usually devote at least a day to something. When you’re thinking about it, planning it, you don’t really count that part. But the actual doing? At least a day. I have a couple pieces that are not done, and just getting the backgrounds done took me two eight hour days. I haven’t done anything else to them yet. So those are pretty labor intensive.

When I get into the zone, time is really irrelevant. I can lose myself in my work. I do that with scrapbooking, too. Sometimes you get into it, and you look up and a whole day’s gone by. That’s joyful. So why would I ever stop doing that?

Kita: Do you work on multiple pieces at once?

Darby: Sometimes, not usually. I’m usually focused on one thing. I love art books. Books about techniques and different artists, and everybody says, “You should prep all these surfaces, and grab these different backgrounds,” and that doesn’t interest me. I’m not the Ford company, I’m not interested in being an assembly line. I just have whatever idea comes and that’s what I want to do, and I feel like that’s what I’m supposed to do. So, mostly, I’m a one piece at a time kind of a girl.

Kita: How structured in advance would you say your work is? Do you really know what it will be before you’re done?

Darby: I’d like to meet the person that does. Once again, all those cliches about happy accidents are so right. I’ll have a general idea, and then something will go on with it, and you end up with something totally different. And even scrapbooking is like that. You start out with one thing, and maybe you mess up, or something looks a little different and then it just leads you to the next step.

Kita: When you’re painting over whatever else you’ve got down, do you prefer to draw it out in advance?

Darby: Very seldom do I draw it out in advance. I guess you would say my stuff is more abstract. I did do a piece recently where I drew my mothers face, on top of a collage and some acrylic, and then I put encaustic over it. So that was very technical drawing, which was very intimidating since it’s my mother, and you know, she’s been gone for twenty two years now. And so it was very special. I actually drew her face, from a photograph, but i’m not normally so freaked out about it.

Kita: You’ve said coming out here was a huge part of your journey, artistically, so are there any points around here you’d like to go to for inspiration?

Darby: Well, I do like to go up Millcreek Canyon, but since I broke my foot up there, at this point I’d just like to go back up there to revisit the scene of the crime. I love to go hiking up there. In the state of Utah, I really like to go to Arches. That was pretty interesting. The first drive up here, I came up the southern way. I saw all the red rock from the road and I felt like a little kid, I was so excited. I need to get back to southern Utah for sure. I still look at these mountains here like a tourist. They don’t look real! I grew up at sea level, and I grew up used to seeing marshes and the Atlantic ocean.  Not even hills. Totally flat. And here, you’re driving on the interstate and there’s these humongous mountains, just jutting out of the earth. And it’s so surreal to me, still. I’m still in awe.


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