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 

Happy New Year and Thinking Big Art

Happy New Year, All! On New Year's Eve, I was fascinated reading the television crawlers featuring tweets from viewers. Many of them commented on watching the new year come in with the "love of my life".

I thought, "Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that the reason authors write a romance novel? How nice to be with the "love of my life" on the first day of the new year.

Happy wishes, happy days for the year 2018. Hoping you have good memories from 2017 and that the new year will meet your expectations and fulfill your hopes and dreams.

***

"Amy Sleeping" oil on canvas ©Mary Montague Sikes

   Recently, I received a notice for an art show, "Think Big" that will be a featured event at Art Speaks on the Bay in Mathews in the spring. Thinking big excites me. While I was earning my MFA in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, everything I painted (except for my pastel working drawings) was big. I loved the feel of the oversized stretched canvasses beneath my paint brush. I enjoyed seeing the way the pieces filled the walls of my large university studio while I painted them. It was wonderful to have a master's thesis show of large work that gleamed on the walls of Anderson Gallery at VCU.

In most exhibitions now, the work is limited in size--usually no larger that 40 inches on the longest size. Those pieces are nice, especially the watercolors, but they lack the excitement of the big pieces that thunder from the walls. Although I enjoy experimenting with texture and color on the smaller canvasses and the wooden supports, I still long to work on the larger pieces again. However, storage becomes an issue as well as the transportation of the work to galleries and shows. Also, most galleries simply don't have the space for sizeable art work.

My VCU thesis show featured work painted with both oil and acrylics. I have many of those pieces stored in my home now. One oil painting, "Rocky Mountain High", 60" x 96", is too big to carry with me in a van as a stretched canvas. Another painting that is six-feet square has never been shown in a public gallery.

When I was working with figures, I did many paintings of our children on large canvasses. I'm glad I did because they provide special family memories for me.

I love big art. Thank you, Bay School, for an opportunity to "Think Big" once more.