Art doesn’t have to be perfect to be great art — the effort is what counts. Imperfections such as off lines or paint splotches where they “don’t” belong could be the defining part of a piece, which artist Lulu Magoo knows well. 

Lu Frederick goes by Lulu Magoo for her art, and Frederick currently lives in Palisade, but comes up to Rifle to work and for the month of June, show her art in Bookcliffs Arts Center. 

“I got my name from the original ‘Magoo’ animated show,” she said. “Where he just goes through life, like sometimes he’ll go through a construction site, swinging on cables, or rocks dropped on him, but no matter what, it always works out for him.”

Frederick lives in Palisade, but currently works at Everbloom Rifle Medical Dispensary and will be turning 39 this year.

“I sold my house back east and traveled around in a camper for a few years,” she said. “I traveled around, trying to see what the seasons were like in each area, and Palisade just has this magical niche, where half the storms just miss us and the seasons are right for me.”

Frederick also runs the Palisade Community Gardens and is an active member in her community, running for a board of trustee position, but said she thankfully lost. 

“There’s something about the Western Slope, there’s this magic here,” Frederick said. “Being an east-coaster, we are ‘go, go, go’, all the time, and we’re raised from that, and our whole way of being in America…it’s a struggle.”

Frederick loves the peace that comes with the western slope and how not only are there things to do in the winter time, but the summer as well. 

“It got me, I’m here,” she laughed. 

Frederick lived in Maryland and Pennsylvania before coming out to Colorado and worked on her degree in art at Briarcliffe College in Long Island, which she uses now to create art from pouring paint and moments.

“It was a beautiful moment,” she said of one of her pieces. “I was receiving support from a masculine energy and it was beautiful and I put that in my painting.”

Frederick loves to put who people are in her paintings, perhaps not recognizable in a normal sense, but views people as mixtures of masculine and feminine and enjoys pulling that out in her art. 

“When I started calling men ‘beautiful’, they got insecure, and turned away because they didn’t know how to take it,” Frederick said. “But people are beautiful, no matter who they are.”

Frederick’s paintings involve human figures, sometimes indistinguishable or seen only from a certain way, and surrounded by a colorful background. 

“For a long time, I had people telling me I could never make anything of myself if I was an artist,” Frederick said. “It would never work out, I would never be good enough, but look where I am now.”

Frederick has been working on her art since college, with some breaks in between when she felt low. Some of her pieces are from moments where she’s working on her own feelings and pieces from her past, but a lot of the time, it’s from how the art comes to be on its own. 

“It’s throwing paint down,” she said. “But at the same time, I’m also revealing what the painting is supposed to be. I have visions of art that don’t pan out and turn into something completely different.”

As part of her work, Frederick wants people to know that art doesn’t have to be gatekept. 

“I’ve seen a lot of people who say that art has to be perfect and that you can’t just throw paint on a canvas and call it art,” she said. “Why not? That’s what I’m doing.”

Now, Frederick says she looks at her art and herself and after learning and practicing for long, realizes that she is an artist and she’s pretty good at it. 

“I call myself an artist now,” she said. “I’ve been part of other art shows and now I’m at one here in Rifle, I think I’m an artist.”

Frederick’s art is currently on display at the Bookcliffs Arts Center in Rifle, including the pieces in the photo, “Artemis and Apollo”, which she has marked for individual selling, but would prefer to sell them as a duo. 

For more information on Frederick’s Lulu Magoo exhibit at the Bookcliffs Arts Center, visit bookcliffs.org/ or to view the collection, visit the Bookcliffs Arts Center at 1100 East 16th St. in Rifle.