Loving Artist Workshops - Taking and Teaching Them

"Gloucester Arts on Main 2018" ©Mary Montague Sikes

More than two decades ago, I took my first artist workshop. Mary Alice Braukmann was the instructor. Traveling from Florida to Williamsburg, Virginia, she brought with her a wealth of knowledge and a lifetime of enthusiasm. Besides the excitement of painting in a week-long workshop, she opened a new world for me for interacting with other artists.

After I earned my MFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, I retreated to my home studio and painted alone. Developing my ideas on canvas was rewarding, but something was missing. I needed to be around other artists. At VCU, I had my own large studio room in a big, deserted school building near the campus. There were 11 other artists, all MFA candidates, painting inside that massive structure. During those two years of intensive learning, visiting artists from New York and California also used the studio space there. We spent time together. I missed that.

The artist workshops filled the interaction void. I found more and more of them. Some, such as a watercolor workshop with Patricia Tobacco Forrester in the Washington DC area. I loved her large expressive paintings and was sad to see that she died in 2011. Creatives are especially missed when they are gone.

I've taken many workshops at Cheap Joe's in Boone NC. That's where I found my hero artist, Mary Ann Beckwith who brought Robert Doak watercolors and Yupo into my life. Janet Rogers is another exceptional watercolor artist I found there. And I will never forget the Robert Burridge workshops where I fell in love with using orange under-paintings on my acrylic canvasses.

Sedona AZ is filled with seduction and energy. Each year, Jan Sitts teaches her workshops there that are filled with color and texture.

Besides taking workshops, I enjoy teaching them. I've had the opportunity to give classes in San Diego CA, Denver CO, Hilton Head SC, Richmond VA, Williamsburg VA, Gloucester VA and more.
For me, art teaching is as much a learning experience for the instructor as it is for the student.

As artists we must continue to grow and make our lives meaningful. The "messy" minds of creatives are filled with all sorts of ideas that cry to evolve.

I love artist workshops. Thanks to all my teachers and to my students.

Learning More About Yupo - A Different Painting Process

"Tangled on Xanadu" (right) ©Mary Montague Sikes

When I work on Yupo, I get lots of questions about the process. After all, Yupo has a slick synthetic surface completely different from the usual look and feel of watercolor papers such as Arches.

The painting on the right in the photo, taken of one of my gallery walls in Crossroads Art Center in Richmond, Virginia, features Yupo attached with matte acrylic medium to a gallery-wrapped canvas. It is an experimental painting in many ways because of my methods of applying intense Robert Doak watercolors to the Yupo and because it is on canvas and not under glass.

I discovered Yupo in the mid-1990s while taking a workshop with Mary Alice Braukman in Williamsburg. At the time, we experimented briefly with alcohol inks dripped on the surface and moved around with alcohol sprays. The color shifted and moved as it dried, making it fun to watch. I was hooked on the paper that wasn't. I did some research and found that Yupo, used for printing, was manufactured in Chesapeake, Virginia. Since it was not far away, I went to the plant and was given a variety of samples of some very large sheets of Yupo in all the different weights they made at the time. I was thrilled. The experimentation continued.

It was not until I discovered Mary Ann Beckwith in 2004 that I uncovered the most exciting aspects of working with Yupo. She introduced me to the amazing and intense Robert Doak paints that he created in his Brooklyn, New York studio. Playing and spraying paint on heavyweight sheets of Yupo produced art pieces like nothing I had ever seen before. I loved it. Mary Ann used her background in chemistry, inspired by her chemist father, to lead her students to the discovery of exciting creative results using a variety of materials.

Thanks to the wonderful teachers I have encountered along the way and the growth of the Yupo market, my journey in experimental work has grown and expanded. The more I learn about working on Yupo, the more my joy increases.

"I Love Yupo" is the title of the demonstration I plan to give at Crossroads Art Center in Richmond during the Open House on May 18.

Baseball and Using Slight Fame to Sell Art and Books

This is World Series week in baseball. My St. Louis Cardinals are not there this year which is disappointing because a couple of missed opportunities, wrong choices, and an injured star player made the difference in the Championship series with the San Francisco Giants. As a dedicated fan, I hang on every pitch of every game. Now I have four months off before Spring Training starts in February. Yesterday as I read the art marketing newsletter by
Barney Davey about fame, I started to wonder how I might combine my baseball interests with marketing efforts.

Marketing newsletters can be helpful and often provide ideas I haven't considered before. I certainly never thought about the fame rub off effect that a video by Derek Halpern of Social Triggers describes (included in Davey's newsletter). The video suggests that photographs taken of you with a famous person can heighten your fame in the eyes of the viewer. Halpern even suggests, in the video, that just having a photograph of a famous person in a sidebar of your blog can raise the level of your fame.

I started thinking about photographs I have with well-known people and realized that most all of them are baseball players. A photo taken with Cardinals ace pitcher Adam Wainwright is my favorite. I also have photos with pitcher Shelby Miller, coach Jose Oquendo, former Cardinals batting coach and star Mark McGwire, 2011 World Series star David Freese, Hall of Famers Red Schoendienst and Tony LaRussa, and more. I even have a photograph taken on the lap of former pitching star and current broadcaster Al Hrabosky. (The "Mad Hungarian" pulled me onto his lap after a man shoved in front of me in a spring training autograph line.)

Artist Mary Alice Braukman (left) and Joe Miller (Cheap Joe) with me

 There are photos in my files taken with artists and a few writers. They are nothing like the ones I have with baseball stars.

According to Barney Davey, artists need to be only slightly famous to sell their work. He believes in building a following of 100 or more collectors for artists to be successful in their careers and finances.
Writers must develop a following of many more readers than that to gather fame and fortune.

After reading Davey's post, I believe fame and reputation will help sell your work. Now I need to develop a plan to create "rubbed off" fame from baseball players. Perhaps a series of paintings about A Field of Dreams. Isn't that how most artists and writers work? We are always inside our own "field of dreams". We need only "slight fame".

Teaching Artist Workshops - Mixed Water Media

This autumn, I'm teaching mixed water media workshops in different locations. Getting my materials together is exciting because it reminds me of all the amazing possibilities that exist for artists like me who love to experiment.

A few years ago, I took a workshop in Williamsburg with artist Mary Alice Braukman. Her approach thrilled and inspired me. She also introduced me to Yupo, a synthetic "paper" that allows paints to shift and flow in many unusual ways. Mary Alice made me realize that although I held a MFA in painting, I still had lots to learn. Because of my enlightening experience with her, I decided to take a different workshop every year.

In 2006, I first met Mary Ann Beckwith, and she introduced me to the Robert Doak pigments. Through Mary Ann, I learned that Doak creates these intense colors in his Brooklyn studio and that they are the most amazing colors ever. Since then I have worked in awe of the unique effects that develop when I use his paints in combination with Yupo. Not only is Mary Ann a gifted artist but she is a dedicated and caring teacher. She introduced me to fractals and to the photo a day astronomy web site. Those pictures from NASA have greatly influenced my work.

"Peace Anywhere?" ©Mary Montague Sikes

Other workshops over the years have inspired me. Robert Burridge showed me the way to orange underpainting, and my work grew brighter. Jan Sitts demonstrated the use of a variety of materials and mediums to build up a more sculptural surface on canvas. With layering, she reignited my love of the three-dimension.

A bit of learning from all of my teachers, including Thomas Thorne and Carl Roseburg from the College of William and Mary, shows through in every piece of my work. I suspect it shows through in my teaching as well.

Anyone who is interested in taking one of my workshops can let me know in comments or e-mail, and I will contact you individually. I can promise excitement and new experiences with art. Like me, you will never paint in the same way again once you experience these materials and techniques.

--Mary Montague Sikes