If you made paintings inspired by your old diary entries, what would they look like? It’s unlikely they’d bear any resemblance to Esther Pearl Watson’s, which prominently feature her father Gene Watson’s flying saucer projects, built in the ’80s in Texas. In Esther Pearl’s paintings, the saucer looms over landscapes sprinkled with children, sneakers, and old Pepsi cans, which the artist explained to me weren’t recyclable for cash like beer cans were when she was a kid, so she and her siblings would always be disappointed to find them. They collected cans to help pay for gas for the family car, which often broke down.
In her new show at Sandra Lee Gallery, Big Dreams, there’s a painting of Gene abandoning the smoking car on the side of the road, heading home on foot and thinking about his inventions. In another painting, a beautifully multi-colored flying saucer illustrates one of Watson’s diary’s tiny quotes in the upper left corner, “One day there will be a saucer that will have lights of many colors and all my friends will think it’s cool. Wylie, TX 1988.” Underneath it’s signed by Esther Pearl Watson, 2010.
Diaries play a major role in the artist’s work. On a trip from Vegas to San Francisco, she once found a 5th grade girl’s diary in a gas station bathroom. She and husband Mark Todd (also a renowned artist showing work in the gallery’s back room) were stuck in a hot car with no radio, reading the diary aloud and getting wrapped in the preteen saga. And that’s how Watson’s Unlovable zine was born, which has recently been released in glorious pink/purple/glitter book form, just how the original diary’s owner Tammy Pierce would have wanted it (her name was reinvented by Watson for the unknown author’s protection). Watson found that her own teenage self had a lot in common with Tammy, and their stories sometimes cross over. The book and zines, along with some sweet neon prints that glow in black light, are available at the gallery.
