Artwalk’s 2019 honored artist, Collie Ryan, has been living a quiet, creative life in the Big Bend for nearly 40 years.
A musician, poet, and former art student at San Francisco State University, the California native grew up in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.
She moved to Terlingua in 1980. The focus of her art is the mandalas she has been painting on hubcaps for more than 35 years.
The mandala is a spiritual symbol, a representation of the universe with an inner and outer world. The word mandala means circle, and is recognized as one of the oldest symbols known to man. Nature is one of Ryan’s greatest inspirations, along with the study of spiritual ideas and traditional and ancient arts, including Theosophy, a religion established in the U.S. in the late 19th century.
