The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

WAITS- BURG - Bette Burgoyne's idea of doing a drawing 11 inches wide and 10 feet long had several sources of inspiration.

There was M.C. Escher's "Metamorphosis," the mindbending left-to-right journey of a crossword like text that changes into blocks, lizards, a beehive, fish, a flock of birds, a mountain town, a chess game and finally back to a text.

There were the Chinese landscape paintings that unroll from top to bottom and are so long they could only be displayed in a very high stairwell.

And there was the Women's Torah, a 62-panel scroll created by an international community of women and finished in Seattle last year.

"You're going in a linear fashion, but it changes as you go along," Burgoyne said about her first-of-a-kind drawing in a telephone interview.

Her journey will begin with storm-pregnant clouds that churn tumultuously, break into geometric patterns and morph into electric lightning bolts. From there, the charged scene bends into whirlpools and changes to seaweed and underwater landscapes, and to the branches of a tree and thin veils hanging from twigs that become curls of smoke and fade to black.

Aptly called " Scroll," Burgoyne's graphic journey rendered in white pencil on black paper, is her first drawing of its size, and Waitsburg's AMO Art Gallery at 117 Main Street will be the first to show it.

The opening reception for the exhibit of some 20 of Burgoyne's drawings is from 5 - 7 p.m. on Thursday, March 17. The show runs through May 1 with showings by appointment.

"Several new drawings will be introduced for this exhibition," gallery owner Claire Johnston said. "'Scroll' will be completely unrolled (for its display), allowing viewers to see it in its entirety."

It took Burgoyne two and a half months to complete "Scroll," which was "much longer than I thought it would take," she said. "I only had a general plan when I started. I usually let the drawing become what it wants. It's sort of an organic process."

"Organic" is also the best way to describe Burgoyne's imagery, which, in the case of "Scroll," can be read from left to right, right to left or top to bottom.

The main influences in Burgoyne's drawings are trees, smoke, clouds, water, waves, vibrations, stones, fungus, hair and animals.

"There is a specific light situation I emulate in the drawings: the oblique lighting around sunset time," she said. "It is the time when the day is ending and a night is just beginning. The forest world is shown in high relief as light rakes across the branches and rocks."

Burgoyne is from Seattle. She earned her Bachelor's of Fine Arts degree from Cornish College of Arts in 1986 and a Master's of Fine Arts from Mills College in 1991. Living in San Francisco for 10 years, she taught at several places, including the San Francisco Art Institute and California College of the Arts.

Her awards and residencies include the Veronica di Rosa Residency Award at Headlands Center for the Arts in California, Tread of Angels Fellowship at the Djerassi Foundation in California and the Watkins Award at New Langston Arts in San Francisco.

Last year, her show "Transillumination" at Vermillion Gallery in Seattle was well received and reviewed by Laura Macomber at Visual Art Source.

"Bette's drawings have been described as mystical, intricate and ethereal," Johnston said. "The subjects of her drawings may seem familiar if you have ever pondered the veins of a leaf or peered into a drop of pond water through a microscope. Her white pencil lines accumulate to create textures of undulating light and fluttering veils."

Working with white pencil on a dark background is a natural way of rendering light, compared to the traditional way of drawing shadows and outlines in gray pencil on a white background, Burgoyne said.

While she draws, she likes to listen to classical music, avant guard jazz and African polyrhythmic songs that are "life affirming." Songs of Issa Bagayogo, whom she once met, are among her favorites.

Then, she lets the images evolve from the first rendering, driven by the music, her own vision for the work and what the preceding patterns suggest as a direction for the piece.

"I don't want to over think it," she said. "I want it (the drawing) to have a life of its own."

Above: A detail from "Scroll," Bette Burgoyne's new 10-foot-long drawing that will be exhibited for the first time at AMO Art Gallery in Waitsburg. Left: Burgoyne at work, using white pencil on black paper, which she says is a more natural way to depict light.

Because of the white, wispy look of her work, Burgoyne said her drawings sometimes look "spooky" but aren't intended to look "gothic," like a lot of trendy, dark, violent art these days.

She explains how there is something deep, mysterious and eerie about her main source of visual inspiration: the forest. The gnarled roots and rough bark can conjure up all kinds of creatures and imagery that are "just there," spooky, beautiful and sublime all at once, Burgoyne said .

W hat makes " Scroll" unique and of local interest is some of the inspiration she drew from her last trip to Waitsburg, picking up on the eastern Washington rock formations that line the route from the west.

She is impressed the town has such a "high-caliber" art gallery like Johnston's AMO Art and said she is pleased her work will be on display there.

"It seems like this little cultural seed they've planted," Burgoyne said about the art space Johnston and her husband, Jim German, have created on Main Street. "They're very reputable."