Artist of Week: Paula Van Overbeke Voris

LAS CRUCES – Artist Paula Van Overbeke Voris has received rave reviews for her art, taught generations of aspiring artists of all ages and exhibited in top galleries herself. She’s also created some of the territory’s most intriguing and original spaces, transforming a vintage Victorian home and small buildings into beautiful and cozy studio and gallery spaces.

Lately, she’s been working on a bigger scale. She’s built warehouses at 406 Roundtree Place in an industrial area near North Valley Drive and West Amador Avenue.

She’s also added something new to her artistic repertoire: rapidly created art that is on display at Red Door Studios, a Roundtree Place warehouse that she’s furnished as a kind of Las Cruces version of a SoHo loft.

“I did these birds in about 15 seconds each,” she said, showing off flocks of framed winged creatures, all beautifully formed, and often exhibiting a touch of birdy whimsy and avian attitude. They festoon a little structure made of recycled doors. Within is her sanctum sanctorum, a private space with portraits of some of her favorite creatures, which generally come with intriguing back stories.

“These are ghost jackrabbits, I think,” she mused, describing a painting of large jackrabbits shrouded in an ethereal haze, apparently sharing tales with several varieties of smaller bunnies.

'Face Quilt'

She led the way through a big interior courtyard surrounded by artists’ studios. decorating in crisp white with black and bright red accents. The same color scheme used for a cozy nook with tables and chairs.

In a small lounge hangs the result of her other personal art self-challenge: small portraits, each painted on canvas in just one day. From 51 paintings, she chose 44 of her favorites to create “Face Quilt.” The subjects are students and family members, people she knows whose occupations range from teaching to plumbing and lawn work, ethnically diverse images inspired by a variety of eclectic sources and her own fertile imagination, a portrait of Albert Einstein, and homages to well-known works and artists, including her take on a Vincent van Gogh self-portrait and Leonardo da Vinci’s “Lady With An Ermine.” There’s a portrait of President Obama that comes, like most conversations with the lifelong educator, with a life lesson or at least a moral point or object lesson or two.

“I don’t believe in violating copyright laws or painting from someone else’s photograph with no changes of your own. I took some photos on my TV screen when Obama was speaking and used them to create the portrait,” she said.

“I’ve painted so much over the years. It’s fun just to be able to do whatever style I like, whatever I want to do,” she said.

Artist's influence

Voris, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, earned a bachelor's degree in art education from Hanover College. She moved to New Mexico in 1971 and was an art teacher in Las Cruces Public Schools for more than 25 years. She taught at what was then Court Junior High School as well Alameda Elementary, and Lynn, Sierra and Vista middle schools.

She said she taught more than 7,000 students before her retirement in 1997 and enjoys frequent encounters with the artists she’s nurtured over the years.

Voris, who has been a member of the Border Artists and exhibited in top venues throughout the Mesilla Valley, regularly has works at The Cutter Gallery, 2640 El Paso Road.

She’s also enjoying sharing skills in the new millennium in her innovative studios, including a Victorian home she renovated and landscaped on a picturesque downtown Las Cruces neighborhood. She once had a gallery there and often hangs out with friends and her friendly greyhounds, painting and arranging inspirational artistic vignettes.

“I enjoy playing house,” she explained, as she led a tour of the distinctly different, modern Red Door Studios where she currently shares studio space with Luis Navarro, her husband Peter Voris, Katie McLane and Tiffany Figueroa. She still has a limited amount of studio space to fill at Red Door and said she might eventually open the space to the public for an occasional art show. For information, call her at 575-640-8904.

S. Derrickson Moore may be reached at 575-541-5450, dmoore@lcsun-news.com or @derricksonmoore on Twitter.