Susan Coe Brown starts with quarantine time and keeps drawing

By Mary Alice Murphy

Photos Courtesy of Susan Coe Brown.

Susan Coe Brown started with the goal of 14 days, "which then seemed like A LOT, and daily posted my drawings on Facebook, warts and all. Friends asked how long I was going to keep it up. I may have said, flippantly, 'until this is over'” But as the news became more dire, somewhere along the line 100 seemed like a reasonable goal. Not to mention a huge challenge for me."

Why was she quarantining, you ask? She was on an out-of-state trip, when she heard that New Mexico was about to shut down because of the coronavirus and that she would have to quarantine when she returned. She came home and began her 14-day quarantine by using colored pencils to draw mostly plants during her self-imposed isolation.

Watercolors are generally her medium of choice, but she decided to go with Prismacolor pencils in a sketchbook.

Several people suggested that she put together a book or a show, "but I thought a fundraiser was a better idea. My friend and neighbor Simon Sotelo told me that the Youth Murals Program was no longer under the auspices of the Mimbres Region Arts Council and would really benefit from not just funding but also community awareness. So, with Simon’s suggestion, I asked Diana Ingalls Leyba what she thought of the idea and she has been a real encouragement."

Brown said she loves working with small children and has the greatest respect for anyone who can manage large numbers of kids, particularly adolescent kids. "That the results of Diana’s shepherding are these magnificent murals, in which our entire community should take pride, is downright amazing."

The Grant County Community Foundation, of which the Youth Murals Program is now a part, has offered to help with the processing of payments so that funds will go directly where they belong. "Peggy Hutchinson has been another great supporter of my project," Brown said.

One succulent drawing hangs at Light Art Space through October 4, 2020 and the lupine shows at Leyba Ingalls Arts, along with a drawing that is not one of the 100. Proceeds from the framed drawings in galleries will also benefit the Youth Murals Program.

"All of the 100 drawings were done in my kitchen on 100 consecutive days, though for a few I started with sketching outdoors," Brown said. "By the way, plein air is hard! There are bugs and there is wind and the subjects don’t hold still. I am in awe of real landscape painters like Paul Hotvedt."

When asked if she had "writer's" block, she replied: "As I wasn’t always inspired (who would be?) it was tough some days to know where to start. Writer’s Block is real and not just for writers. Oddly, I couldn’t seem to focus on anything else until I had made a decision about what I would be drawing later."

All of the 100 drawings are on 9"x12” (or 12"x9”) sketchbook paper, many on gray, using Prismacolor pencils. Each took several hours.

"I often draw plants, because they are what I know, and they don’t take offense if I manipulate their parts for the sake of composition," Brown laughed.

"In high school we were tasked with drawing an amaryllis bulb every day as it did its thing, growing its leaves and finally its bloom," she said. "While I don’t consider myself a terribly disciplined person, this kind of exercise really teaches you how to see. You may notice several individual plants in my series make repeat appearances with their growth and, in some cases, flowering. This kind of careful observation can be a happy relief from all the bad news in the world."

She believes a few of the pictures show frustration or exhaustion. "But never boredom/ When I was small I made the mistake of telling my mother that I was bored. She then taught me how to iron, and I have not been bored since."

Brown ending up using Facebook as an auction platform because the "slick online auction software out there would have eaten up too much of the money that should be generated for the Murals Program. But you don’t need a Facebook account to view the pictures at facebook.com/scb100days. And if, you don’t have Facebook, you can place a bid by contacting me with the day and name of the of the drawing(s) at scb100days@gmail.com."

To date, $1,600 in individual bids has been generated. The auction is live until midnight EDT on 9/1/2020.

Brown described this as a story about pictures, little drawings and big murals, and how they can make life better for all of us.

Susan Coe Brown starts with quarantine time and keeps drawing—for 100 days