Can You See Me?, mixed watermedia and collage, 30 x 20 in. |
Every artist hits a wall now and then. Maybe it’s because you haven’t had the time or the place to paint for a while, and now you don’t know how to begin again. Perhaps you’ve had some kind of artistic flop, and you’ve been beating yourself up over it. Or maybe you’re just tired of or frustrated with what you’ve been doing, and you don’t know how to break out of your rut. That’s the time, says Mary Alice Braukman, to step into the studio and experiment.
Mary Alice knows the solution well because she’s experienced the problem herself. When her husband died several years ago, she was unable to paint for eight long months. Fortunately, a wise, lifelong friend who knows her passion for art counseled her to push herself to return to the studio. Painting, he advised, was the path to healing. And it worked. The day she finally picked up a brush again, she painted for nearly twelve hours straight, not with the intention of creating a finished painting but merely to revel in the joy of working with the materials.
Now, Mary Alice teaches this concept in her workshops, and she’s seen the act of painting work wonders for all levels of creative blocks, from simple boredom to serious fears and setbacks. The key, she says, is to drop all expectations and just have fun enjoying the creative process. Give yourself room to play.
Playing In Paint
“When artists come to my workshops,” says Mary Alice, “the only thing they have to bring is their brushes. I have five sponsors— Golden, Dayler-Rowney, M. Graham, Crescent, and Alternative Art canvases—that provide all the rest of the materials for these artists to experiment with.” The freedom that comes with “free” materials is actually something we can do for ourselves any time. We all have a tendency to view our materials as precious, and many of us think we shouldn’t “waste” them by trying new techniques or new subjects that may not result in a successful work of art. But sometimes we just need to stop being stingy with our materials, and recognize that our joy and our growth are well worth the cost of paint, paper, and canvas.
The first two days of a Braukman workshop are spent on simply experimenting with the materials. “It’s like chemistry,” she says, with obvious excitement in her voice. “You can do the same technique on paper or canvas, and you’ll find the materials react differently. It’s all about exploring and pushing limits and trying new things.”
The way to get past a block is to "touch art" every day... Give in to the call of art by doing even the smallest thing, and your enthusiasm will build.
Because she’s always experimenting with new ideas herself, Mary Alice teaches a different set of techniques in every workshop. For instance, she might teach a photo-transfer technique, where you put down some gesso or matte medium or polymer gloss medium, lay a newspaper or magazine photo down on it, and burnish until the printing ink is transferred to the painting. Sometimes she suggests using tea or coffee to stain the paper or incorporating found photos and other objects to create a collage. And, of course, she demonstrates lots of variations of ways to layer and lift or blot back layers, which are the hallmarks of her own work. “It’s fun to share all these different techniques because no two people will ever use the same technique the same way,” she says.
Controlling the Chaos
The fun, the experimentation, and the play has its place in restoring our motivation and reigniting our interest, but, says Mary Alice, there comes a time when you have to get serious about applying the principles of art to a piece. The unpredictable nature of the initial layers must be reined in by the finishing phases. “It’s the greatest compliment to me when collectors say they see something new in one of my paintings every time they look at it,” says Mary Alice, “but I would never want technique to become the focal point of the painting. Technique should serve the painting by exciting the viewers, but you also have to give them something to identify with.”
So the second half of her workshops are spent on asking, How can these techniques change what I normally do and where I would like to go with a painting? Some students choose to further develop a promising new “experiment” into a finished painting, while others use their new arsenal of techniques to resolve unfinished or unsatisfactory paintings they've brought from home.
How to find your direction? “View your painting through a small matte,” advises Mary Alice. “Holding the matte close to the painting, go around and find the area that’s the most important and most interesting. That should be your focal area or center of interest. Then pull the matte back, closer to your eyes, so you can see the whole surface, and start thinking of ways to build the rest of the painting around that.” More than likely, you may have to add and/or lift more layers of paint to tone down competing areas and create paths that lead the eye to the center of interest with shapes of color and/or value. Adds Mary Alice enthusiastically, “The underneath layers vibrate through and make the painting that much more interesting, so the more layers, the better!”
Of course, not every choice should be guided by technical or formal reasons. Emotional expression definitely has its place here, too. For instance, Mary Alice says she did some of the best work she’s ever done when she started to paint again after her husband’s passing, but the work possessed a lot of intense emotion that made it hard for some people to handle. And yet, she freely allowed the emotional imagery to enter into her work because, she believes, the artistic process should not be about making marketable pieces but about tapping into the power of expressing without words. Her current work is filled with plenty of feeling, too, but it has a more joyous character that reflects the healing she’s experienced these past few years.
Surrendering to the Pull of Art
It’s hard to imagine that this woman—who freely admits she’s left meals burning on the stove because she gets so absorbed in her work in the studio—has ever experienced a lack of artistic motivation, but she has. “The way to get past a block,” she says, “is to ‘touch art’ every day. That means look at your own art collection, go to a museum, go out into nature, get with other artists, look at books or magazines, or go into your studio and simply handle your materials. Once you get in there, you’ll want to do something. Give in to the call of art by doing even the smallest thing, and your enthusiasm will build.”
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