What About Mark-making?

"Wetlands" (detail) ©MMSikes

 When I was spending two years at Virginia Commonwealth University, earning my Master's Degree in Painting, we had a different artist each semester who came and worked with us in a big former public school building near the college. This visiting artist, also, had a large studio classroom in which to work. There were 12 of us, each with our own studio room, so we had an ideal working situation. While I was there, three of our visiting artists were from New York City; the fourth came from California.

 

One of the New York artists talked at length about the artist's mark. 

Mark-making was especially important for her, and her remarks make an impression on me to this day. At the time I was working a lot with pastels, and painting with pastels is mostly mark-making for me. The three large acrylic paintings  that I am currently working on in my studio all are filled with my marks. (See the detail from "Wetlands", above.) The visiting artist insisted that an observer can tell who the artist is by the marks they make.

Perhaps. 

Today, so many artists use a variety of tools for their mark-making--found objects, wooden skewers, credit cards, etc. That's especially true when working with oil and cold wax, one of my favorite mediums. Now, I'm not sure the artist marks are as distinctive as before. Next time I'm in an art gallery, I'm going to look around with mark-making in mind. 

What do you think about mark-making in a piece of art?

Mary Montague Sikes

https://artstore.marymontaguesikes.com 

www.MontiSikes.com 

Who is Monti?

"Monti Just for Fun" ©Monti Sikes

Who is Monti?

As I struggle with branding, I find myself asking that question more and more often.

 Mary Montague Sikes, sometimes Mary Montague Hudson, is the name I sign on my paintings and have listed on the covers of my books. However, most of my friends call me “Monti”.

 Often, that name is used for groups and events. But it interferes with branding my legal name.

 The first day of college, my three roommates decided that Mary Montague was too much of a name for them to say. (Yes, Mary Washington College was overcrowded at the time and had four girls crammed into a room together. They were in the process of building a new dorm complex where we would live for our sophomore year, so we had to make do as freshmen.)

When I went off to elementary school, my mother told me, “Never let anyone call you, “Mary”. I didn’t, and to this day, I tense up when someone addresses me that way. I couldn’t be “Mary”.

One of my college roommates came up with the nickname, “Monti”, and it stuck. More and more people started to use it.

Now I am asking myself what to do. Should I brand two names?

Should I have two websites—one for Mary Montague, the other for Monti?

Is Monti the Passenger to Paradise in my books, set mostly in the Caribbean?

Is she the one who painted the “Monti Just for Fun” series of paintings? If you look at my work, she is indeed the more fun-loving artist.

What do you think? Should I sometimes be Monti? Does that hurt the branding for my real name? Will people know we are the same person?

Who is Monti?

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Memorial Day Starts the Tennis Season

"Tennis Gang" ©Mary Montague Sikes

For many years, I looked forward to Memorial Day and the beginning of the summer tennis season. We usually had tennis tournaments over the weekend, and I played singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. It was so much fun.

Over the years, it became impossible to find others to play singles, so I joined women's doubles groups, and my husband and I drove long distances to play mixed doubles. I never liked doubles as much as singles, and I watch only singles matches in events like the French Open, Wimbledon, etc. 

We've taken tennis lessons and played in tournaments in lots of places, including the Dennis Van Der Meer Center in Hilton Head, South Carolina, at Saddlebrook in Florida, in Palm Springs, California, and many other locations.

When I wasn't on the tennis court, I sometimes painted about my favorite past-time. To the left is one of those 54" x 42" acrylic paintings I created of a group of us. I'm glad I made that painting because now it is a wonderful reminder of all those tennis court days that began on Memorial Day and ended on Labor Day. 

Memories. I can almost feel the hot air and the Virginia humidity.

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Painting and Sculpture, Loving Both to Make Art

©

Vermont Marble ©MMSikes

While studying in the Studio Art Department at the College of William & Mary, I fell in love with both sculpture and painting with acrylics. Back then, I met Thomas Thorne who was a proud graduate of Yale University and talked often of his days there. “Dr.” Thorne was especially enamored with thick, juicy acrylic paints that were fairly new at the time. The results when working on stretched canvas were somewhat similar to using oil paints. Dr. Thorne was excited and encouraged me to learn as much about them as I could. Although he was brusque, he took an interest in me and suggested books that I bought and that remain in my art library today.

"Mother and Child"

 I was enrolled in the college and, instead of signing up for regularly scheduled art classes, I took studio art each semester. My class could be studio painting, studio sculpture, studio printmaking, etc. It was art heaven for me, so I took two studio classes each semester, painting and sculpture.

I’m not sure what drew me to sculpture at W&M except I enjoyed ceramics classes and working in three-dimension. I was happy to get to know Carl Roseburg who was an amazing instructor. In his classes, I learned to create busts using plaster casts over the Plasticine clay that I had sculpted. I also learned how to weld metal support systems to use for building up cement sculptures. The sculpture, "Mother and Child", is 5 1/2 feet tall and is among my most prized art collection.

While at William & Mary, I worked with Vermont marble for many months, sculpting an abstract piece, using the subtraction process. I discovered how to work with chisels and files. During my research, I was especially influenced by British sculptor Henry Moore which is especially noticeable in the blocky forms I created with Keene's cement.

Eventually, I realized the difficulties that came with making sculpture. Most of it, I could not move by myself. It was awkward to keep and store. Although I have sometimes carved Montana talc and worked with Celuclay, I decided that painting is the medium for me. When you love color, that's the place to be.

Mary Montague Sikes 

www.marymontaguesikes.com

www.MontiSikes.com

 

The Power of Art for Healing

Conference meditation paintings ©Sikes

Art, Healing, and Meditation--I believe in the power of all three, especially when they are used together. 

A few years ago, I presented a workshop in San Diego, California, for which I demonstrated the process of intuitively creating art and poetry for meditation and healing. This was at a World Healers Conference, sponsored by the Institute of Thought. Dr. Joseph Costa and his staff were in charge of the weekend event. (Sadly, Joe left the earthly plane earlier this year, so there will probably be no more conferences like that one. I always learned a great deal from him and from all those attending.)

During this event, I demonstrated my creation of meditation paintings, and I developed unique pieces of healing art, for several people, including Joe. I , also, wrote intuitive poetry for each painting. The work I made was with Robert Doak intense watercolors on Yupo, a favorite painting surface of mine.

There is a special element that develops in my work that I make in this manner. I believe there are important messages to be found  in both the painted image and the words that come as part of the process. There is power in the discovery, and meditation can bring healing for mind, body, and spirit.

Sometimes I use the Robert Doak intense watercolors on canvas and am amazed at what develops on that surface. These are two of the canvas paintings I created about the time of the conference.

"Optimism" ©Mary Montague Sikes

"Love" ©Mary Montague Sikes

Sometimes I believe everything I paint is done intuitively. The words on these paintings can offer healing. I believe in the meditative power of art for healing.

Marshland Magic

Bright sunshine cast the sharp, dark shadows of leaf-barren trees across the landscape, but the warm air hinted of spring. I pulled a long yellow legal pad from a book shelf, picked up a pen, and headed out to stand on our sprawling redwood deck.

The narrow creek was higher than usual. I could see pine trees from the other side reflected in the still waters. I often wondered if this was one of the creeks branching off the York and Mattaponi Rivers that Captain John Smith explored by barge long ago, soon after the settlement of Jamestown. Pocahontas and her friends might have played in our woods that edge the creek. I wondered about that, too.

Something compelled me to step down from the deck and hurry to my spot where I often study and photograph the marsh. Drawings and paintings have resulted from those studies. Angels live in the marshland. I am sure of that.

"Angel of the Marshland"
©Mary Montague Sikes

Angel of the Marshland

Angel of the Marshland, your colors amaze me

And you have such a vibrant glow.

Like lost among the brown grasses

You’ve changed the colors to suit you.

 

I love the trees and waters of the marsh.

Do you hide there often?

                                                                                                                 I will look for you next time I go.

                                                                Then, I’ll touch your golden hair.

                                                                                 ©Mary Montague Sikes

This is a painting that resulted from my visit to the hill overlooking the marshland that day. The poem (there are two more verses) came to me later. I could sense the presence of this angel standing near a tree soon to come alive with bright green leaves. The dogwood would have flowers as well. 

My painting and poem became part of my very special book, Artful Angels. This is a book filled with spiritual beauty and poetic wealth, designed to heal the body and the mind with its mystery and magic.

Amazon.com

Barnes & Noble

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monti7olen@verizon.net

A Ghostly Vision at Rose Hall Plantation

When I first visited Rose Hall Great House, the scenic beauty of the grounds captivated my imagination. Although there were others in the gardens, a somber quiet surrounded me. This adventuresome trip to Jamaica was one of more than a dozen that would follow in the next few years.

The air that January day was like perfumed velvet, and the lush foliage was like nothing I had seen before. Everything around me reminded me of a little reading book from my childhood, Visits Far and Near. I longed to travel. I longed to experience the adventure of the tropics.

I knew as I stood in the garden that someday I would write about Jamaica, about Rose Hall, about the visions growing in my imagination. Or was it my imagination?

A ghostly quality surrounded me that beautiful warm day. Somehow, I was surrounded in fog. The people around me disappeared into a far-off gray shroud. Their voices faded into nothingness.

Then I saw her, Annie Palmer, the mistress of Rose Hall, the woman who tortured her slaves, the woman who killed her lovers. There were blood-stained floors. I’d read about them.

 Annie Palmer was a woman of mystery. She lived for a while in Haiti where she learned the ways of voodoo, ways to control the slaves who worked her land and cared for the spacious Caribbean mansion.

 Her dark hair glowed and sparkled through the mysterious fog. Annie Palmer would be part of my book. She would be the reason for my heroine’s confused connection to the past and to Rose Hall Great House.

 Was she real? I wondered as her face grew more obscure in the dim morning light.

 Perhaps not, I thought, as her form blended with and was lost in the fog. Perhaps not, but I will make her real in my story.

 

Read more about Annie Palmer in my novel Hearts Across Forever. See how good overcomes evil. Read the prologue (with horses that remind me of Heartland) on Amazon.