WOOJZEES!

My Woojzee Story

“Are you still painting those, what do you call them, ugh, those intense guys?” I get asked this all the time by friends and fellow artists. The implication is “Why don’t you wise up and paint serene pictures!” First of all, yes, I do paint woojzees, (pronounced “wu’-shees”) and to clarify the rest, here is my woojzee story.

In 2001 the world went topsy turvey. Both my husband and I were “outsourced” from our jobs and 9/11 hit. Life changed, and I was about to rediscover woojzees. I lived in rural Texas between burnt cornfields and acres of cotton gone bad. In my 48-foot barn converted into an art studio, I painted furiously. The temperatures soared so high it split my frames, but the worst part was fighting off the wasps. (Well, no, the worst part was worrying about losing the farm, but that’s another story). Yellow jackets buzzed my face, guarded my paint and threatened me every time I tried to dip brushes in my water jar. Aggressive flies and fire ants tortured me mercilessly, forcing me to wear pest strip bracelets on my legs and arms. Not to mention the muddaubers that drifted like harpies smearing hard-as-cement mud all over my canvases. Interestingly, they are attracted to white paint and have a secret, saving grace. That gift and the world of spiders that plagued me deserve an entire chapter. For now, just realize it was a time of obstacles… obstacles that drew out my inner woojzees.

The months slogged on until one day a small fractured figure introduced itself into one of my paintings. After incorporating dozens of these new guys into dozens more paintings, some as plants, animals, humans and aliens, I made the connection –these figures were woojzees, the mysterious characters my Dutch Grandpa had told me about when I was a child!

He was a bit of an enigma to me, he seemed “old” (the first time I asked my parents how old, he was 65), gruff, and curiously fun loving. As an adult, I learned many interesting facts about him, but back then, during yearly childhood visits, I knew that he lived in Orange City, Iowa, the Dutch town with windmills and wooden shoes, he taught me to play poker, and he told me woojzee stories. Not “once upon a time… and then they all lived happily ever after” stories, but ongoing dialogues, stories that lived in the moment. He’d point to someone and say, “You see him? That’s George, he’s a woojzee-neck!” and laugh. “Look at that house -that’s a woojzee house!” he’d observe driving, or he’d tweak my cheeks and growl “Are you a woojzee? Are you a woojzee girl?” Truthfully, I didn’t know! I was too shy to ask an adult questions like, “So, you mean, am I a Dutch girl?” or “Do you mean, like, am I a leprechaun thing?” or “Do you mean, am I a normal human girl?” I never got the whole story—I just laid low, hoping to fill in the gaps of the puzzling, intense and humorous stories.

Today I know that the gruffness, mystery and humor surrounding the woojzee stories made them all the more compelling. Like a good painting, when much is left to the imagination you never get tired of examining it. And now that I am the woojzee creator, I’ve answered some of my own questions about what they are. They represent the fight for survival—my survival, the bugs’ survival and the country’s survival. They are about having the faith not to give up, even if it means finding humor in the face of disaster. They are my fissured fairy tales about the little guy standing up to bigger forces. As classic as the little engine that says, “I think I can, “I think I can” or the tortoise who plods along, woojzees endure when logic says, “Why bother?”

So yes, I am still painting the curiously intense woojzees. While people don’t need art to remind them that life can be hard, I don’t think we have to avert our eyes from that. Serenity has its moments, but for me, nothing beats overcoming obstacles. Hanging in there can be heroic, the human spirit beautiful and endurance can be transcending. I think my grandpa who survived the Depression, WW1 and WW2, and all the challenges of his day, would agree.