This semester, I've been taking a portrait painting course at my alma mater. I've been out of school so long and I wanted to engage in some kind of learning that was more enduring and substantive than a weekend or weeklong workshop.

The experience helped me understand how to use oil paint properly. Previously, I was using excessive amounts of linseed oil and did not understand how to use solvents. I didn't even know that solvents could be mixed with oils. Developing a better understanding of oil paint use has been a real game changer. I also gained a much greater appreciation for underpainting, which I had previously avoided due to lack of understanding the benefit. Throughout all of the portraits, I frequently referenced the Asaro head. Thinking about the face in terms of planes has helped me better understand facial structure, light, and form.

It was also nice to just experience being a student again, albeit with a much different lens.

Beyond technical growth, one of the most significant things this course has given me is a new set of questions to wrestle with: why painting? Why representational work? Why human-centric work? I am always a proponent of developing more technical skill, but when I am left to my own devices, these questions keep churning around in my brain. For me, the medium tends to serve the concept rather than the other way around. I love the process of painting, and it's definitely the visual language I'm most fluent in, but I do want to interrogate why painting is necessary or relevant for me, personally. It's helpful to not lose sight of the fact that despite whatever grandiose sense of meaning we assign to the action of painting, at the end of the day, we're just smearing around pigments on a surface. Anyway, here are some of my projects:

Resting. Acrylic on Craft Foam.

This series features self-performed “resting” faces of school employees. While photographing my colleagues for this project, I noticed that some struggled to fully relax their expressions and let go of the performative smile often expected in care-facing professions. This observation became central to the concept and technical direction of this project.

The portraits are painted on craft foam, a material commonly associated with children’s artwork and classroom activities. I intentionally chose this unstable and non-archival surface to reflect the instability of public education. The softness and fragility of the material also created technical considerations while painting, prompting me to shift from working with oil to working with acrylic.

Two of the portraits are bordered with scalloped classroom-style borders featuring repeated smiley faces attached with visible staples. These materials reference the visual culture of elementary classrooms while also pointing toward the emotional performance expected of educators. 

Teaching, particularly elementary teaching, requires a constant projection of warmth, patience, and emotional accessibility. Because education is also a female-dominated profession, these expectations overlap with broader social expectations placed on women to appear pleasant and accommodating. Through this series, I wanted to explore the tension between authentic emotional states and socially performed expressions, as well as how differently male and female “resting” faces are often interpreted. Neutral expressions on women are often perceived more negatively than similar expressions on men.

Asaro head studies. We used the Asaro head a lot to figure out light and form. I was surprised by how heavily I leaned on it throughout the course of the semester. It's an excellent tool for visualizing facial planes.

We worked with the Zorn palette, a limited palette of 4 colors: titanium white, yellow ochre, cadmium red, and payne's gray (or alternatively, ivory black). This was a color mixing exercise as we familiarized ourselves with the palette.

Simplified 1.5 hour studies - Ryan

Two alla prima self-portraits in oil. The first is on Masonite panel, the second on Dibond panel. I really had to contend with my own face while doing these. I definitely got tired of looking at it.

February so far........ the cultural banality we get used to and stop noticing and the wild places around us.

I'm unsure of how this plant image was created. It seems like an accidental image, perhaps made by the plant getting pressed into the wall, adhering, and then slowly wearing away, taking the paint with it? Just speculating. It's beautiful. Accidental printmaking.

Some thoughts on art education and gratitude:

When I was a kid, I took art lessons from an artist in Fort Scott, Elaine Buerge. She introduced me to all kinds of mediums. Together, we did expressive pastels to music, acrylic still-life painting, mosaics, abstract work, all kinds of things, but most formatively, watercolor. Early on, she seeded the idea that "art is the process, not the product." That phrase was painted on the wall of her studio. I think I’ve carried her influence as I’ve gotten older, working across mediums and always keeping my perspective process-centered.

It makes me wonder who taught that concept to her. I imagine a long lineage of long-forgotten art teachers, their wisdom handed down like an inheritance.

Ann Villamaria was an artist who was also the mother of one of my best friends. She made these gorgeous, stylistically clean botanical watercolors that just mesmerized me. I loved the precision, the color gradients, the lettering, the thoughtful organization. When I saw her work, I knew I wanted to paint like her one day. I also saw her dedication to her family, the hard work of care labor she did for her children, and the generosity and inclusivity that she extended to me as her daughter’s friend.

Thomas Wheeler was my high school art teacher. He encouraged and facilitated my exploration, entered my work in contests, attended award ceremonies outside of contract hours, and tolerated my teenage angst. Most memorably, he taught me that art is poetry.

Jamie Oliver was my painting professor in college. He gave me a solid foundational understanding of formal skills that I return to regularly, especially utilizing color, structuring compositions, and analyzing the conceptual read of imagery. He modeled how to engage with painting as a daily, ongoing practice.

Rhona Shand, another professor, taught me that there are many art worlds, a helpful reframe that I’ve found to be true.

Marianne Evans-Lombe, my women's studies professor, taught me about feminist art. She exemplified artist-life fused with mothering. She helped me learn a vocabulary that gave voice to my experiences.

I am deeply grateful for all of these people, who were so formative at various times.

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I have also had experiences throughout the years with instructors who taught me, unintentionally, how not to teach. The teacher who routinely embarrassed students in front of their peers... the hierarchical subtext positioning those inside academia as the only artists with validity... unprofessional moodiness... To be fair, there have been times when I haven’t been a great teacher myself. I have, at times, been lazy or impatient with my words or said something stupid or misguiding. I haven't always understood how much students are listening, even when it seems they’re not, and how enduringly an older person's words can stick with a kid or young adult.

Teaching is exhausting. It’s constant mental and emotional labor (and when working with young children, it's overstimulating by structural design). Educators are often surviving through our own failed expectations of ourselves and others and the systems we're working in.

Teaching asks for your best self hour by hour, day by day: be patient and compassionate, practice and model empathy, avoid causing harm. I'm far from perfect, but my stamina for doing this has grown throughout the years as I’ve gotten older and become more self-aware of the responsibility I carry. I'm aware of how heavily beliefs can linger, and how convoluted the process can be to unlearn them. Working with young people is a heavy ethical responsibility, especially in the arts, where achievement or perceived failure can be so fused with identity.