We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rusti Willow. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rusti below.

Rusti, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

In about March 2021 I opened up My computer to discover a beautifully written email from a woman by the name of Jeanie Bell. She had expressed gratitude for a painting I had been commissioned to paint of her and her late husband Bill. She told me it helped her through a really difficulty time. I had met Bill through a mutual friend just months before he had passed of cancer. Jeanie’s email came to me a couple years after his passing and her words exuded strength, courage and resilience. This wasn’t the first time she had experienced loss of her closest love, and it wasn’t going to be the last. Her first husband had suddenly passed due to a brain aneurysm, leaving behind his wife and their daughters Jess 11yo and Sara 9yo. Between the deaths of her husbands, she lost her brother, mom and now her youngest, Sara (31 at this point) had stage 4 colon cancer.

Jeanie was reaching out to me to create a portrait of her beloved daughter Sara. As an artist, my promise to myself was to stay true to the art that I cared most about. That art is my recycled paint chip series, created with the remnants of paint dried up on palettes and in paint trays. These paint chips create unique and textured works of abstract art I never saw fit for waste. I created these pieces out of my love for art and I would not take a commission in this medium. But there was something about this woman, her story, and the way she told it that inspired me to move away from the typical portrait painting and create my next paint chip piece, Sara.

For months I studied Sara’s beautiful face. Her gorgeous expressive eyes and wild spiky hair. as I lay each paint chip down, I wondered who this person was and what she may be going through. I felt so connected to this painting and to her without even knowing Sara. It was unlike any other commission portrait I had done before. There was an ineffable energy behind it.

It was now September of 2021. The painting was completed. Jeanie and her daughter, Sara were visiting CA from SLC, UT where she was being treated. It was finally time to meet her and present the painting. I was a bit nervous, but something about their energy made me float along with them. Sara was so lighthearted, funny and real which put my nerves at ease. As I showed them around the beautiful Carmel Highlands home of which I was looking after, their painting hung on the wall eagerly waiting for their observation and approval. You wouldn’t notice her unless you were standing on the opposite side of the room. They passed right by her several times. We went outside and walked around the succulent garden. I picked a few babies for Sara to keep. She loved succulents as well as her garden back home. We went back inside to which they expressed their desire to see the painting. I let them know she was hanging up the whole time. I think they both jumped back in excitement and disbelief. I guided them over to the room and stood opposite of where the painting hung. Tears fell.

I made them dinner that night and we opened up like we had been friends for years. I had never met two women who were so real, authentic, open and unafraid of mortality. They didn’t tell themselves stories to make this difficult fate easier. They leaned into it with courage and grace. I was awestruck. But I also felt at home. I had chosen this unconventional path as an artist due to my own close calls with death. I had already come to terms with my own mortality. I wasn’t afraid of dying. I was afraid of choosing a path that was unfulfilling and didn’t encourage growth, so I quit my full time job to follow art. And now, it has brought me to this moment.

After dinner Jeanie and Sara invited me to paint a mural on a cinder block wall, outside of their SLC home.

Months passed and it was time to go to Utah. I scheduled 2 weeks to complete the 500 sq ft mural.

Sara was obsessed with mushrooms. So I planned on creating mushroom forest, representing some of her favorites.

The more I got to know Sara, her mother Jeanie and the family, the more I grew to love them. Sara was especially remarkable. She sat me down one of the first days and shared one of the succulents I had given her the first time I met her. She had kept it alive in the brutal Salt Lake City conditions.

One night, after I had wrapped up from a long day of painting the mural, I find most of Sara’s family in the yard creating arts and crafts with her. It was a beautiful sight. They also had a pile of peach dresses on the floor to which I inquired about. “We’re having a baptism for Sara!!”. What?!?! Her relatives who had just departed back to California was pushing a baptism on her before she moves on to the next world. This was very hurtful to her as she was not religious. I was confused. “We’re going to baptize her in vodka, want to join us?”. Yes!! Of course!!

Everything fell into place. We all wore peach gowns and Sara wore a white gown with a pimp jacket. We carried crystals in our hands and lit candles down the steps. It was supposed to be silly, and we all tried to hold in our laughter. But it turned out to be the most beautiful tribute to Sara instead. Holding and laughter and tears has to be one of the most intense and beautiful feelings

Later that evening Sara can fast that her biggest regret in life was that she had never fell in love at the age of 32 and got married, especially to a woman.

I’m sitting there, enamored with her already imagining wanting to love her for the rest of her life. But I didn’t want to burden her in case she didn’t feel the same way about me.

As my time was coming closer to an end in Utah and the mural was developing, Sara and I became closer. The day before I was flying back to California Roe versus Wade had been overturned. We had gone to a thrift store that day and there are several wedding dresses hanging from the ceiling. She wanted to try one on so I joined her for the fun of it. She insisted on buying us wedding dresses that day. We went to the protest with handprints all over our bodies, her mom, just had a double mastectomy a month prior, shirtless, handprints all over her body. It was powerful.

Sara kept signaling to me that she cared for me. I finally confessed my feelings that night. We held hands and stared into each other’s eyes as we both felt the same way about each other the whole time.

I had to fly out the next morning not knowing if I would ever see her again. I had about a half an hour, but she started bleeding. I didn’t know if she was going to make it and we cleaned her off. She laid naked in bed, looked at me and said “draw me like one of your French girls”.

I was supposed to drive back to Utah with my dog, but I didn’t know how much time she had left. I flew. She had ordered us slippers for our wedding. We had a small wedding in the backyard and painted each other’s dresses.

She passed a couple weeks later and I was with her till the very end. I cleaned her body after she died. She was so beautiful.

I stayed with her mom for a couple months afterwards. Sarah had collected fake flowers, feathers and creepy baby dolls, unusual sticks from the forest and multiple materials ranging from velvet to lace.

She had a vision with all of these materials. I used everything to create an installation in their basement. Her family said it was like being inside her head.

There is so much more to the story here, but I hope this gives you an idea. This truly was the most magical, meaningful and fulfilling thing I’ve ever done.

I saved the paint chips from the mural and am currently creating a series revolved around my experience with Sara and her remarkable family.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Growing up in the small agriculture town of King City, there wasn’t a lot to do except learn to be the creator of my own entertainment. Music was a passion of mine at a very early age. I would sit at the piano for hours with my cassette player and learn my favorite songs note by note. Music enraptured my soul and the art followed. The crayons, pencils, pens would take off on their own paths telling their own stories as the music guided them. I would ride my bike out into the country hills with my pan flute, drum and drawing pad. The wind was affectionate and the trees and rocks kept me company. My simple life in my simple town made me a natural autodidact.

In my early adulthood, I had focused my energies on school and worked to support myself. I had never really thought of myself as an artist, but had painted for the love of art. In 2004 a seed was planted when my art had inadvertently found it’s way into the Phoenix Gallery in Sacramento, CA. This was shortly after a serendipitous moment that changed the whole course of my life and why I am an artist today. I met my musical hero, Mark Kozelek from Red House Painters because of a painting I had created of him. Meeting my heroes had become a theme later in my life because of my art and assured me I had taken the right path. When Phoenix Gallery had displayed my work, it caught the attention of another gallery, Solomon Dubnik. Not realizing my potential as a self-taught artist, this moment changed everything.

My community in Monterey nurtured the artist seed within me and I continued to create while working. A solo bike trip from Portland, OR to Monterey, CA. birthed the realization that life lived simply can make room for cultivating a fulfilling path as an artist. Many hard worked corporate hours were spent paying out-pocket-medical bills due to my preexisting condition of epilepsy. Finally the day came when those bills were all paid up only to have two more seizures and a collapsed lung. The system was not in my favor and so I ducked out of it in 2011 to follow my passion. The uncertainty of the length of time I had in this world made me realize I needed to live a life of purpose.

I quit money for two years and bartered my way through life; and it blossomed. Opportunities were presented everywhere. During the first few years as a full-time artist, I had collected the remnants of paint from my palette after each painting. They were too beautiful to be discarded. This was the dawning of Morning Light; a recycled paint chip mosaic..

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A self-taught artist, Amanda “Rusti” Burkman’s career began in 2005 exhibiting work at Phoenix Gallery in Sacramento. Approximately 6 years later life and medical experiences provided Rusti with an opportunity to focus on her studio career, a path she has exclusively followed ever since. She has artwork featured in private collections across the US, stretching from California to Virginia. In 2014 Rusti collaborated with poet Perry Anan Rose to publish “Rooted in Grace”. Her artwork was featured by the Bernie Sander’s 2016 and 2020 Presidential campaign. From 2016 – 2019 Rusti was chosen by twin sister and fellow artist Amy Burkman to appear in multiple live art performances for charitable fundraising. And most recently,  Jane Goodall Foundation is in planning to use Rusti’s artwork in a post-COVID fundraiser event. Rusti is responsible for numerous murals, public artworks, and earthworks across the US.

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The passion driving Rusti Burkman flows from a love of music, a deep connection with community, and an intense desire to bring more beauty into the world through artwork. By infusing these aesthetics into a new style of painting, she developed her ongoing “Paint Chip Mosaic Series.” Each painting in this series has its own allure, depth, and meaning but still is physically intertwined with the paintings that have come before. By reusing dried paint scraped off of her marble easel, Rusti creates a vivid palette that breathes new life into the colors. She captures the essence of her subjects as these fragments—each beautifully unique—come together and fuse to become whole. Paintings range from figurative to abstract and often portray landscapes, portraits of people she greatly admires or who have been major influences on her, and surrealism that reflects the human form within the exquisite patterns of nature.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

My journey is an unusual one. I’m not sure most would have chosen this path, but I’m so grateful to be on it. I had the courage to quite my job, money, my cozy apartment and even my cell phone in order to live simply. I didn’t want money to be the focus but rather, the art. I knew if I stayed true to my art and trusted my path, things would fall into place.

There’ were times when I would collect clam chowder samples at the Wharf to fill my belly. It wasn’t easy, but it was more fulfilling then working 60 hours/week at times just to pay bills. I knew those moments were making me stronger and appreciate life. If I thought I would have to save for retirement, I might have stayed in the corporate world, but I was given the gift of epilepsy. I had quite a few close calls with death. I wasn’t afraid of it, but more afraid of not living a life of purpose.

This path has not only help me discover myself as an artist, it has gifted me with meeting some of the most influential people in m life; musical icons, political and environmental leaders. Had I not taken this path, I also wouldn’t have met Sara, my late wife. Our story unfolds so magically, serendipitously and all because I chose this path as an artist. It has brought me profoundly beautiful experiences and I can’t think of anything I desire more than that.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is having an affect on others in a positive way. I love moving people to tears. I care about what I do and how it affects people. The freedom part and being my own boss is kind of nice too.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rustiart.com
• Instagram: @rustiwillow

Image Credits
Michelle Robertson