I Love New Mexico

Can art, specifically painting, cure Parkinson’s Disease (PD)? There are currently a number of art therapies that are being studied to determine whether getting PD patients into some form of clay art or painting is working, but I can tell you a personal New Mexico story that’s both exciting and heartwarming.

I want you to meet my friend, Connie Kuper Perez. She’s a native New Mexican, just like me. She grew up near Amistad. She’s married to Michael Perez, another native New Mexican from Encino. She’s got a great story, and recently she discovered that she’s also an amazing storyteller. In fact, much to her surprise and the delight of everyone who knows Connie, she’s an award-winning author and painter, the creator of the Rocking R books, a series about children on a ranch in New Mexico.

In 2008, she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. For the next almost ten years, Connie didn’t dream of either writing or painting. What she dreamed about was being able to stand and walk on her own, sign checks without shaking, do menial chores around the ranch without help. She was dreaming about getting her life back.

When Connie’s Nara Visa neighbor suggested in 2018 that she pick up a paintbrush and start painting, Connie hesitated. Following her Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2008, and her subsequent retirement from a teaching career that included stints in Corona, Amistad and Logan, Connie was confined to her couch. She was only 62, spending her day wondering how she had gotten to this place. She was eager to find a better way to cope with PD. And she was immobile for the first time in her life.

You see, Connie was one of the stars of Amistad’s 1974 championship basketball team in which the Cowgirls played the Clovis Lady Wildcats to take the state title. This was in the days when there were no classes in women’s high school sports, so Amistad beating all those other teams and then the Clovis team in the finals was a stunning upset. (I remember one fateful spring afternoon in Jal, NM, when the Logan [pop. 1,100] Lady Longhorns softball team, of which I was a very timid freshman player on the bench, played the Monzano High School women’s softball team [ABQ pop. 344,000 at the time]. It was the hottest, windiest, most miserable experience of my life. As I recall, the final score was 24 – 0 in three extremely long innings.)

Connie went on to play college basketball at ENMU and NMSU at a time when women’s sports programs were just started to exist as a result of Title IX. She was a trailblazer in women’s sports in New Mexico, and a force to behold on the court. I was proud to know her. There was no bench sitting for Connie.

After college, her first teaching job was in Corona. In order to get the job, she had to agree to sponsor everything – cheerleaders, organizations, the senior class – and run the concession stand, and her husband had to drive the activity bus after working all day on his family’s ranch in Encino. But she loved teaching. Eventually she and Mike moved back to Amistad to start the Perez Cattle Company . She taught at the elementary school there for several years and then moved her teaching certificate to Logan, where she taught kindergarten.

Despite her athletic background and years of hard ranch work, the progress of the Parkinson’s proved to be physically debilitating and mentally exhausting. She told me, “I was spending nine hours a day watching DIY television. My symptoms were so bad I could hardly write my name.”

She wasn’t interested in painting.

But to quiet her insistent friend, Connie agreed to paint two days a week. She found her mother’s dried-up acrylic paints and old canvases and started. It was frustrating and slow work. Her tremors made for some interesting early canvases. But she felt better at the end of each day.

She painted local churches, adobe homes, show steers for a local FFA student, and the ranch where she lived with Michael. She starting feeling so good that she found herself painting nonstop. Five months after she began, she had completed over 100 canvases.

The tremors got better every day. Her mental acuity was returning. Connie started painting pictures of children on the ranch to entertain her twin grandchildren. After being unable to write her name and get off the couch, Connie started spending long days at Terry’s Marketplace in Logan, where she set up a booth and began selling her paintings. She says she couldn’t stop painting.

In December 2018, Connie’s first children’s book, Home on the Rockin’ R Ranch was self-published and delivered to her doorstep. She had taken the pictures of children on the ranch she painted for her grandchildren, added a story line, very serendipitously located a Santa Fe editor, and became an author.

The Rocking R books feature Connie’s illustrations and are the story of the ranch adventures of Rusty, Rosie, and their dog Raspberry. They’re colorful, fun, and educational (Connie is, after all, a retired elementary school teacher). Home on the Rocking R Ranch was the first in a series that includes book two, Kuper Visits the Rocking R Ranch and book three, Farming on the Rocking R Ranch.

Fast forward to now. I ran into Connie a couple of months ago when I was in Logan visiting my parents. She was, of course, still painting, so I bought a sweet piece with three white-faced calves to go with my Connie painting of the Gallegos Church (you can find her paintings here).

She told me the Rocking R books were selling like hotcakes. And winning awards, like the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the Mom’s Choice Awards.

But here’s the best news. Connie’s health continues to improve. Her days on the couch in Amistad are over. She’s painting and giving readings at schools throughout the state. She’s selling books at stock shows and craft fairs and on Amazon (see link for ordering below). During COVID-19, she’s reading her books on video so that they’re widely accessible to children staying at home.

I have grandchildren. They love these books. I love these books. Connie knows ranching and she knows kids, and these days, she also knows painting and book publishing.

Connie’s a true New Mexican. Creative, smart and talented, with a lot of grit to go with all of that. Order a book for your kids. I can’t wait to hear how much they like it.