There's Something About Being with "Creatives"

Mary Ann Beckwith talks about art ©Mary Montague Sikes

I just returned from a week-long visit to Boone NC where I spent five days with nine other "creatives" in Mary Ann Beckwith's experimental painting class. Since I first met Mary Ann in 2005, I have loved her. The atmosphere around her overflows with excitement and positive energy. I listened to her and watched her painting demos, and I just wanted to paint, paint, paint. Sadly, Beckwith plans to retire from teaching workshops and concentrate on her own work. This was her next to last workshop. The last one will be in October 2017 in Austin TX.

Being with other "creatives" in this class was special. I didn't feel the jealousy or competition that sometimes develops in art workshop classes. Instead, there was high energy focus that led me to new ideas and thoughts about making and finishing art. Much of Mary Ann's direction is toward developing design in paintings.

I remembered my early painting classes with Thomas Thorne at the College of William and Mary. He talked about design in artwork then, but it didn't make the impression on me that it should have. I was too enthralled by the intense color of my newly-discovered tubes of acrylic paint to care about anything else. I wanted to be a colorist. I had started out with oil paints that dulled with my overuse of turpentine. I didn't like the smell or the slow drying of the oil materials. Acrylics cleaned with soap and water. I loved them.

Now Mary Ann has taught me to like watercolor paints, especially those manufactured by Robert Doak in his studio in Brooklyn NY. I first painted with those intense watercolors 11 years ago and have been excited by them every since. Because both watercolors and acrylics are water media, I can mix them.

I hated to come home and leave the wonderful intense atmosphere of Mary Ann's workshop at Cheap Joe's in Boone. But I am inspired and thankful for the opportunity to have been with other "creatives". There is just something about them...

Workshop Class at Cheap Joe's ©Mary Montague Sikes

Too Much of Anything is Too Much in Art or in Writing - Or Is It?

During the month of April, in midst of the A to Z Challenge, I took a week-long workshop with the talented artist Pat Dews. After hearing many accolades in praise of her paintings and her teaching, I longed to experience a workshop with her.

Pat Dews giving a demo talk in Boone NC

At the beginning of her first demonstration, Pat talked about the importance of having quiet areas within a painting. I jotted down her words, "Too much of anything is too much." Sounds simple but it is so true of anything we do, especially in creative work that includes writing as well as art.

Pat Dews' workshop was full of energy and imagination. Throughout each day of painting, she showed us many different techniques she uses to give texture in her experimental water media works. All the students in her class were experienced artists. For five days, I marveled at the talent I saw all around me. I also was impressed by the strength of the design elements in everyone's work.

Creating abstract from realism and realism from abstract was a theme I observed in many of the paintings. I love working with the abstract and with color and texture in experimental art. Pat's paint palette is much different from mine, but I still love the more muted colors she uses.

One of Pat Dews' textured demo paintings in progress

Each day, after class, I went back to my project of creating a Painting a Day for the A to Z Challenge. It was amazingly difficult for me to "shift gears" to paint with acrylics on my little stretched canvas (11" x 14" or smaller) primed with bright orange after my day working experimentally with inks, dyes and other painting media on full sheets of watercolor paper (30" x 22").

Our trip to Boone NC where the Pat Dews' workshop was held is a six-hour drive from here. While in Boone, we like to stay at the Highlands on Sugar Mountain which is a 45-minute drive from Cheap Joe's Art Stuff (workshop location). With all the travel, the first couple of days back home are recovery time. I started to wonder, did I have "too much" art all at once.

It was a lot of art, but, today, after two weeks, I'm going to unpack my experimental painting starts from the workshop and see where I might go from there in developing them. I'm also heading back into my studio to paint another cat for my A to Z Challenge group of 26 paintings. (The original cat painting went to my daughter.) I have a 20" x 20" gallery stretched canvas primed with bright orange paint, and a photo ready for reference. Since my "D" painting is of a daffodil and a dragonfly and is my only pastel on paper in the series, I'm also considering creating a new painting in acrylic on canvas for that letter.

Maybe "too much" was just not enough! I really loved doing a Painting a Day, no matter what the circumstance...