Jody Rigsby | Painting the World - Southwest Art Magazine

Jody Rigsby draws endless inspiration from her nomadic lifestyle

By Bonnie Gangelhoff

Jody Rigsby, Stealing a Kiss, oil, 10 x 20.

This story was featured in the July 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art July 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

Some dates in people’s lives are unforgettable. For artist Jody Rigsby, April 15, 2016, is one of them. It’s the day she and her husband, Wayne, a graphic designer, crawled into their blue Ford F350 truck and hit the open road to see America. To prepare for the odyssey, the couple sold their home in the Denver area and shed about 90 percent of their earthly goods. With the proceeds from their home sale, they purchased a 36-foot trailer where they planned to live and work indefinitely. “I wanted adventure, and Wayne wanted to travel,” Rigsby says of the motivations for their decision to make a major lifestyle change.

Fast forward to 2019, and the Rigsbys are still on the road, living their dream. Talk about downsizing—their new rolling residence measures 260 square feet. Wayne has an office in the front of the trailer, and Jody has her studio in the back, in an 8-by-10-foot space dubbed “the garage.” In what she describes as “orderly chaos,” it’s packed with a foldable easel and taboret, plein-air backpacks, paints, frames—and the Yamaha motorcycle they use to get around when the trailer is parked.

“Travel has opened my eyes and my heart to so much,” the artist says. “And it has changed my painting because I now put my emotions into works with greater ease. Every day is a new one, bringing people, places, and things I experience for the first time. It’s a constant reminder of how much our world is filled with beauty and bottomless inspiration.”

: Jody Rigsby, Creekside Conversation, oil, 12 x 24.

: Jody Rigsby, Hopnotized, oil, 12 x 9.

: Jody Rigsby, Indigo Tranquility, oil, 16 x 12.

Rigsby paints with equal finesse in an array of genres but admits that her heart belongs to portraying animals. She is particularly thrilled that her portrait of a wide-eyed rabbit, titled HOPNOTIZED, was juried into the prestigious Society of Animal Artists exhibition, Art and the Animal, which opens in September at the Briscoe Western Art Museum in San Antonio. “I am honored they saw my work as valid,” she says. “Most of the [artworks in the show] are realistic. I have worked hard to paint animals with personalities without them being caricatures.”

Color is one of the driving forces behind her whimsical takes on her subject matter, whether it’s clouds, canines, or cardinals. For example, in INDIGO TRANQUILITY, she depicts a pair of indigo buntings perched in a magnolia tree. Her artistic goal, she says, was to work with the brightest blues and the brightest oranges and reds to create a perfect balance between them, so no one color dominated or overwhelmed the piece.

The relationships between creatures fascinate her, and it’s not unusual for her to observe how they interact with each other for several days before picking up a brush. When she saw cardinals in Mountain View, AR, the sighting inspired STEALING A KISS, featuring a trio of cardinals in a cherry tree. A male cardinal leans toward a female, suggesting that the two are lovebirds. “Seeing the colors of the birds and numerous flowering trees made my eyes pop,” Rigsby says.

: Jody Rigsby, Keepers of the Cove, oil, 18 x 18.

: Jody Rigsby, Little Arroyo, oil, 12 x 24.

: Jody Rigsby, Showing Off, oil, 8 x 8.

In CREEKSIDE CONVERSATION, Rigsby was captivated by the forests around Oregon’s Mount Hood, with their lush layers of greens upon greens. “My immediate thought was how to paint depth and movement with as much color as I could get away with, but also keep the feeling of a dense, dark, and vibrant forest with spots of light dancing through the landscape,” she says.

Rigsby explains that early in her career, color terrified her. She spent hours mixing paints. She has since developed a unique approach—her palette is devoid of key colors most artists use, such as sap green, cadmium red light, and alizarin crimson, and she rarely slips her brush into ultramarine blue—but it’s one that works well for her. “I love the world around me, and enhancing that world with splashes of color tickles my soul,” she says.

Rigsby was born and grew up in the Denver area. As a youngster she enjoyed drawing, mostly horses. She thought about becoming an art teacher or, even better, a horse trainer when she grew up. Her parents went along with her passion for creatures large and small, and Rigsby kept a menagerie of horses, sheep, dogs, and chickens. In fact, she recalls getting up an hour before she had to leave for school to collect eggs for her family.

: Jody Rigsby, Sun and Citrine, oil/gold metal leaf, 20 x 10.

: Jody Rigsby, Leggy Loiterers, oil, 14 x 14.

: Jody Rigsby, Maya, oil, 10 x 8.

In high school she enrolled in art classes, and teachers recognized her talents; upon graduation she landed a scholarship to Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design in Denver. After graduating with a degree in graphic design in 1987, she worked in the field for seven years. This was followed by a 10-year stint teaching art at Denver School of Artists, a charter school for students from sixth to 12th grade.

Then in 2006, when she turned 40, an epiphany arrived with her birthday. “I decided I was not going to live the next 40 years like I lived the first 40, timid and scared,” she says. “I felt as if I was missing out on life.”

Rigsby decided it was time to pursue a career as a full-time fine artist. In the years that followed, she enrolled in numerous classes and workshops with artists such as Kim English, Dan Beck, Nura Mascarenas, and Melinda Morrison. In 2012, after spending countless hours in her studio and participating in local art shows at coffee shops and churches, Rigsby secured representation with Alexandra Stevens Gallery on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. “Collectors and viewers connect with the innocence of her subject matter and the brightness of Jody’s world,” says gallery owner Alexandra Stevens. “Jody designs her paintings with abstraction, stylization of shapes, and a play on colors. I would call her work a whimsical abstraction of her world.”

: Jody Rigsby, Quail Quail, oil, 8 x 6.

: Jody Rigsby, Room to Breathe, oil, 18 x 14.

: Jody Rigsby, Ruler of the House, oil, 10 x 8.

When we caught up with Rigsby for this story, she and Wayne had just arrived in the mountain town of Estes Park, CO, after a long journey from the Pacific Northwest. Along the way they picked up a new family member, a wire-haired terrier puppy named Mojo. For the next few months the couple plans on putting down temporary roots, managing tourist cabins situated near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park. “At first the thrill and newness of freedom on wheels made us crazy to see everything,” Rigsby says. “Now we take our time. We enjoy spending more time in each place, truly experiencing the culture, art, food, people, and the unique vibe of that particular spot in America.”

For the next few months, then, she won’t have to remove the Yamaha motorcycle from her studio every time she wants to paint. On the road, it normally takes 90 minutes after arriving in an RV park to set up her studio. Her routine includes lowering two desktops from the ceiling, which serve as resting places for her computer monitor, keyboard, and speakers. Above the desktops is a queen-size bed that can also be lowered a couple of feet and doubles as a storage area for frames and a platform for wet paintings to dry. To set up for the day she also must unfold her easel and taboret, which her husband fashioned from an Ikea baby-changing table. All of these items are bungeed to the wall for travel.

An avid quilter, Rigsby has always had a penchant for patterns. When she began painting, one of her goals was to transfer this passion into her new visual art. And so her creative process often begins, in part, with carving a design into a rubber stamp; she then dips the stamp into acrylic paint and stamps the pattern onto the board to serve as the painting’s background.

: Jody Rigsby, Something in the Air, oil, 8 x 8.

: Jody Rigsby, Sparrow Song, oil, 6 x 6.

: Jody Rigsby, Team Mates, oil, 20 x 20.

When the background is finished, she draws her images using a pencil or a china marker (also known as a grease pencil). Next comes oil paint, in both thick texture and thin layers, applied with a selection from her cache of 25 brushes and palette knives. “I want each inch [in a piece] to create a little poem or story,” Rigsby says. “I paint to bring a little joy and happiness into people’s lives. I hope to make someone smile when they look at my artwork.”

In short, for Rigsby, painting is all about relationships—between each of the subjects, between subject and viewer, subject and background, brush strokes and a resting place for the eye. As she paints, each of these elements comes into play in her mind.

And speaking of relationships, Rigsby reports that she and her husband are having the time of their lives. The couple has no itinerary planned beyond Estes Park, she says. They may amble to Texas or Tucson or maybe drive down the Pacific Coast Highway in California. “We have had a lot of laughs, fun experiences, scary ones, a few tears, and so many exciting surprises always just around the corner,” Rigsby says. “We know that we are not even close to wanting to stop. I think we have many more years of living in our tiny rolling house.”

representation
Alexandra Stevens Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; Arts at Denver, www.artsatdenver.com; Walt Horton Fine Art, Beaver Creek, CO.