titled Distance contains a ruler and sextant,
while Time, the last piece in the series, was
inspired by German novelist Thomas Mann’s
Magic Mountain. She added words, using a
brush to complete the painting, but didn’t
like them, so she sanded them out and
replaced them. “It has much more depth
than the early pieces,” she says. Currently,
she is working on two older works and
adding a third to create a tryptych about
capturing the moment. She describes it as a
metaphorical piece about carpe diem—be
in the now.
Although Belknap has gained substantial
recognition as a painter and has an
impressive body of work, it took a long
time for her to consider herself an artist.
Discouragement came early, when she
wanted to study at the Rhode Island School
of Design after high school, but her parents
wouldn’t allow it. Belknap explains that
her family immigrated to the United States
from Germany when she was young, and
Germany didn’t have a history of women
pursuing higher education, let alone art,
and her parents were very conservative.
“I think they were afraid I’d become a
beatnik,” she says. She went to Sweet Briar
College, a liberal arts school in Virginia,
instead, where she studied the history of
art, and then she returned to Germany to
apply to art school but flunked the entrance
exam after having difficulty with the life
drawing section.
Next, she moved to California and settled
in Mill Valley, where she ran East Totem
West, a shop where she created and sold
art posters, with her first husband, Joe
McHugh, in the late 1960s. Children and
a satisfying second marriage to Dr. Robert
Belknap followed, but still, the desire to
go to art school persisted. “I just had this
incredible, deep feeling that I wanted to
do it,” she says, and so when she was in
her 40s, she attended the San Francisco
Art Institute in San Francisco, earned a
Master of Fine Arts degree and at last
acknowledged her status as an artist.
“Art is instinctive. It won’t leave you alone.
It keeps coming back and knocking you on
the head,” she observes. “There’s always the
next thing hanging over your head, and you
don’t know what it is. I think it’s a lifelong
pursuit. You’re never satisfied,” she says.
She adds, however, that she feels privileged
to have the freedom to follow her passion
and says, “I feel lucky every day to be here.” Entanglements
29
Marin Arts & Culture