SOURCES of creative artistic invention.

LUIS JIMENEZ

Paul Henrickson, Ph.D.

tm. 2013

Even after many decades of very serious and profoundly thoughtful search I remain bewildered, mystified and in awed respect of the sources of creative behaviour. I am still trying but the quarry is a will o the wisp most especially when it comes to the work above which possesses a rather tenuous contact with reality, that is, perceptible sensual reality like sky, earth, planets and the space between the observer and the pictorial subject. It should be remembered, however, that that space is a very special space that has its beginning not with the person doing the looking, but on the surface of the paper and there is a major synapse between that surface and the interpretive mental operations which take place only in the mind of the observer.

Luis Jimenez, on the other hand, consistently offers strong imagery which attracts the mind to the concept of the heroic which he achieves with informed draughtsmanship and the editorial talents of a master story teller. Even the nature of his own bleeding death beneath a large commissioned work

(The Blue Mustang) which had accidently fallen , or, perhaps, so infused with his spirit of power, given the animal by the sculptor himself, had attacked him as often, it is said, (the artists spirit in addition to that transmitted by the artist to the image)those possessed by demonic spirits become the victims of those spirits. It seems a strange and perilous world we travel. In a more general sense it is quite nearly a truism that artists express their feelings and such aphorisms becomes very nearly meaningless in the verbal expressions of those too intimidated by the challenge to create more appropriate verbal expressions. That is difficult, but essential. I have attempted to outline a potential creative spirit in a few artists such as Michael-Angelo da Caravaggio, Paul Cezanne, John Marin, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Doris Cross, Louise Nevelsen, and Chuzo Tamotzu as though what they did was, in some way, an exposition of their most psychic needs. Jean Piaget had identified a similar motivation in the verbalizations of children in their sandbox play as they retold. explained, or re-arranged puzzling events in their lives

And Jimenez is seen apparently giving someone, or some thing the flip.......certainly a gesture many of us have given, or felt like giving when ambient events seemed too much to bare. We may have a man here who is basically angry and his work seems characterized by a collegiate of associated responses, danger, destruction, living on the edge and the willing self sacrifice to anothers passionate hunger entitled South western Pieta the other side , it might be said, of the Christian coin. It is at this point one might ask whether if there are no problems being explored consciously or preconsciously on a subliminal level in an artists work will it be possible to affirm that the artist whose work may be admirable in all pertinent formal considerations is basically devoid of creativity? My first encounter with the work of Luis Jimenez was when, I believe, Geraldine Price had organized an exhibition of his work for Hills Gallery which was located on the plaza. The following is a draft of what I had written as a review and which had been published by the Santa Fe New Mexican, STEP RIGHT UP FOLKS Although the New Mexican WatercolorExhibition which had been hanging in the second floor floor gallery of The Fine Arts Museum has some very fine and some not so fine paintings with a very wide variety of technical and aesthetic approaches it fails to hold an electric candle to the jazzy exhibition of the fibreglass and epoxy sculpture of Luis Jimenez at Hills Gallery. This exhibition has spilled out on to a truck parked in front of San Francisco Street. What the truck held was a very large (did I hear 100?) commission intended for David Anderson at Roswell. Even I had been misinformed about the dimensions of the piece, the impression I would have taken from the rest of his work would have carried over to that one and I would have had to have seen it bigger than life...no matter what!. This is one of the effects these giant, glitzy, glittery, smashingly colored, immense midway prises produce. If any reader recalls the Cyrus Dallin work, with its tender Hiawatha romanticism thy might multiply the effect by a 100 , make the horse white and provide a pair of vermillion collared glow balls for eyes and the point may be understood

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The following in green and bold font is taken from a Boulder, Colorado news item The big blue statue of a rearing mustang at Denver International Airport drew praise and hatred from the very beginning. "Mustang," the giant sculpture by Luis Jimenez, who was crushed by the horse during its construction, turns 5 on Feb. 11, which is an important milestone for public art in Denver. Petitions to remove artworks aren't accepted for the first five years, a rule meant to keep public art installations from being torn down rashly. Standing on hind legs at the gateway to the airport, the towering horse makes an aggressive first impression. "He looks like he's going to kill me," Jennifer Newson said in the DIA terminal. "It's not really settling when you're driving to get on a flight and then you see the 'demon horse.' "

She's one of many who wouldn't mind giving the horse the boot for its fifth birthday. Others are perfectly content to keep the horse around, saying they view it as a symbol of the West. "Keep it, please," said John Newman, who was visiting Colorado from Boston. "It's part of the landscape. I like how the eyes light up." The eyes. Oh, the eyes. That's the part the horse-haters hate most. "Paint the eyes," Newson suggested. "Make him look like a friendly horse." That may be unlikely since the eyes meant the world to the artist. "His intent was to honor his father, who was a neon-sign maker," said Matt Chasansky, who heads the art program at DIA. The piece keeps people talking which is what public art is supposed to do, Chasansky

"Mustang," the giant sculpture by Luis Jimenez, who was crushed by the horse during its construction, turns 5 on Feb. 11, which is an important milestone for public art in Denver. Petitions to remove artworks aren't accepted for the first five years, a rule meant to keep public art installations from being torn down rashly. In any event, tearing it down is not going to quieten the spirit let loose. It is here now for the rest of us to deal with.