Acrylic workshop gets artists outside
Visiting painter shares her personal journey
April Hudson
Northern News Services
Thursday, September 1, 2016
LIIDLII KUE/FORT SIMPSON
A blustery wind did not stop a group of Fort Simpson painters with their hearts set on painting outdoors.
A participant from the en plein air workshop in Fort Simpson paints the Mackenzie River. - photo courtesy of Jessica McVickers
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Six acrylic painters took part in the event, which happened over two days on Aug. 27 and 28. Under the tutelage of Yellowknife painter Jessica McVickers, they painted the Mackenzie River.
McVickers paints en plein air - that is, in open air. Her style involves getting out into one's environment to truly capture the essence of a scene.
"That's my real passion, because you have such an involvement with your environment. You surround yourself with it," she said.
"I had other exercises that would emulate that experience (if weather had been bad) . but there's all sorts of things when you're plein air painting. The environment, you'll hear dogs barking, I've gotten chased by a bear once - there's all these stories you come up with. Sometimes the wind will be so strong you feel you're struggling against nature."
Notwithstanding the bear - an experience brought on by painting outside while eating a container of nuts - and countless sunburns she's received over the years, McVickers says the end product is worth every bit.
"There's a sense of accomplishment afterward," she said.
Over the course of the two-day workshop, McVickers' pupils learned how colours interact and other aspects of colour theory, such as how to bring certain things to the foreground and push others to the background of a painting.
One group exercise, prior to heading outside, involved the six classmates each receiving a piece of a cut-up picture of a muskox and having to paint their portion.
"That exercise is great, because it's an abstract thing they're doing. So they're a lot less biased toward (making) it look like a muskox," she said.
"Everyone comes up with something different, and I always want them to find out something more about themselves - not just learn my style, but learn more about what they can do."
At the end, the picture was pieced together and students saw how their styles differed from one another.
As for painting en plein air, students spent one day painting the Mackenzie River and another painting the house of one of the participants.
The trick, she said, was to do a complete painting in one sitting. That's the way she does her own work, as well.
"The process is what I love, not necessarily the outcome. I'm not really a fastidious painter," she said. "Speed is very pivotal. I'm trying to represent life - I like to do things all in one go. I feel like for that time span, I can get into a mode that is just for that painting. Otherwise, if I go and do part of it, then part another day, I'm not necessarily there anymore."
Ironically, when McVickers was herself a student, acrylic painting was the one she struggled with the most.
"I hated it," she said with a laugh. "We tried out watercolour, oils, acrylics and at first I was much more drawn to watercolour."
When she began working with acrylic paint, she found herself using them as though they were watercolours in order to get comfortable with them.
Eventually, after moving to Yellowknife, she found her own style of painting - a style she felt good about selling. Since then, she has been selling her artwork for the past few years and just recently opened her own gallery, JAMmed Studio.
"It took a long time to find a style I thought was really good," she said. "That was very important to me. I feel like now I can just grow."
