From The Lucid Art Foundation:
“Colleen Blackard was our most recent artist-in-residence. She says, “My artwork blends landscape and myth to create an otherworld for viewers to enter. I utilize methods of printmaking, drawing, and painting to connect external landscapes to memories and dreams.”
In July 2025, I was the solo resident artist at The Lucid Art Foundation artist residency in Inverness, CA. Immersed in the solitude of the mists and the Bishop Pine Preserve for three weeks, I felt as if I had found the Shangri-La of Lost Horizon. Such an enchanting, peaceful place.
Waking up to woodpeckers knocking and watching the light change on the mist over the preserve seeped into my subconscious. When I wanted to spend more time looking inward, I had a myriad of options within the books surrounding me. I found particular inspiration in Gordon Onslow Ford’s books Creation and Insights, as well as David Bailey’s Journeywork and the book Seeing with the Mind’s Eye. I also found inspiration hiking the nearby trail into the clouds. Living with the mist as a constant presence out my windows, it has now become my inner landscape.
Having the space and time to reflect on my work without outer expectations, I made work just for me. I felt the immensity of this gift of time and space I’d been given. This reverent state of mind shifted how I made my work. In contrast to my recent experience in graduate school, in which I felt like I was in a pressure-cooker for two years, I found it more productive to create work like a simmering pot, slowly coming to a boil. The more time I spent simply breathing in the space, the richer the work. Rather than forcing it, the art happened naturally.
It gave me space to process the feedback I had received in grad school, and when those voices came up, I was able to listen to them with compassion and let some of them go. By the end of my time here, I had a new voice emerging, a supportive voice that was my own, and I felt deeply present and centered.
I created a series of prints responding to the mist as I imprinted it into my subconscious. I realized that this mist was unlike the swamp-like mists I had encountered in the marshes of the Northeast, which rise up from the ground quietly, like visible breath in the winter. Instead, this mist is the ocean come to land, and as it swept over the pine preserve, it brought forceful, chilled winds like water currents, sprinkling ocean spray.
Towards the end of my visit, I was delighted to have tea with members of the Lucid Art Foundation and to have a studio visit with Professor Jeremy Morgan, Associate Professor of Painting at SFA. After being interviewed by Professor Morgan via phone when I was applying for grad schools in 2022, I was glad we could finally meet in person. I value the many brilliant suggestions and recommendations he made during our visit. I have much to consider.
So grateful for this time and the connections made.
