Art Inspired by Nature and Recovery

An organic artist, Malibu resident Deb Haugen gains her inspiration from Malibu's natural environment. It has been one year since she survived a massive brain aneurysm that has left her with some health problems, which also serve as her own artistic inspiration.

Haugen paints, sculpts and designs across the spectrum of art, and she doesn't necessarily create assemblages from objects found in nature. Rather, Haugen gathers abstract, amorphous ideas from hiking along the local creek beds, canyons, trails and beaches by finding what she called "the often strikingly familiar abstractions we see in nature and their relationship with time and layering."

In essence, Haugen's form is the absence of form; her work is free-form.

Haugen, 60, developed this philosophy during her studies in the late 1960s, arguably an organic time for music, film, photography and other art forms. Today, she continues to produce pieces indicative of that avant-garde, experimental phase in American culture. Her paintings are reminiscent of Jackson Pollock and Salvador Dali, her paper sketches, of Ralph Steadman. Haugen, who holds admiration for Cal State Channel Islands art professor Jack Reilly, also found a reverie with American expressionist painters from the 1940s and 1950s.

"They let the material they're working with kind of lead the way, and they were reacting to their materials and media," she said. "I was always really intrigued by that."

Haugen said her style comes from these influences, combined with the diverse Southern California landscape and a love for nature.

"Things catch my eye where I'll see branches crisscrossing in a checkerboard pattern," she said. "I'll remember it the next time I pick up a pen and duplicate it in ink. Or I'll see a splash of color and see some dried grasses that are an amazing color. It's more my reflection of shapes and textures and patterns I find."

The artist used this philosophy to great effect following her April 2010 cerebral hemorrhage. Attributing the burst blood vessel to undiagnosed high blood pressure, doctors at the UCLA Westwood Neurology Clinic performed a seven-hour surgery on Haugen to stop the bleeding in her femoral artery. But like many who survive a head injury, there is almost a guarantee of some brain damage. Although she survived, the incident left her with some health problems, including short-term memory loss and issues with her thyroid.

Lucky to be alive, Haugen looks at the health setback as an opportunity to channel the change in her body through her work, and took to pen and paper in the hospital. Combined with her own passion for organic vegetable gardening, it served as an optimistic art therapy.

"I think it really helped in my healing and it's still doing it to this day," she said.

Recently, Haugen had done set design work for theater, film and TV, including shows such as Two and a Half Men, Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters. She also produced an anachronistic, 14-canvas output of mythological Indian deities, for a stage production of Bombay Dreams.

Haugen's artwork has been for sale by word of mouth. And now pieces from her collection "Pillows & Prints" can be found on the website One Kings Lane. Go here to view the collection. Haugen’s website is www.theorganicartist.com