GUEST EXHIBIT: An interview with Ann McMillan

Erica:
Hi Anne. Thank you for being part of Under the Cone. Please tell me how you were first introduced to painting?

Ann:
I came to the kind of painting I do through several periods of media. I currently use pastel, and before this I used oil after someone gave me a kit. This was during my last college years, in 1995 or so. Before that I was science illustrator and water colorist. I had taken science illustration classes at UC Santa Cruz. And before that I was an artist of all media, doing a lot of drawing as a kid. My mom had a drawing teacher for me when I was a kid which was kind of unusual. I hated it.

E: Why?

A: It was not what I wanted to do at the end of a long day at school. It was like having to practice your scales on the piano, hard work and boring.

E: Do you think they helped to shape who you are today?

A: Absolutely. So many of my artist friends envy my drawing skills, even now. And I don’t think of drawing as a strenuous chore now. I enjoy it.

E: You paint outdoors. Do you have a favorite place to paint? Do you ever paint indoors?

A: I often take a really small painting and make it large. I love to paint in gardens, and I am on a garden kick right now. I love to paint in the Sierras but I don’t get to do it enough. And I paint along the coast line in Pescadero, along Stage Coach Road.

E: I have a friend who is an artist and who lives in Belgium. He once said that the light in California is completely unique in the world. Do you have a sense of that?

A: I have a sense that the light here is very special, but I haven’t painted in enough places in the world to know that it is unique. It is really unusual. When the fog comes in, the air filters the fog and the light filters through the fog, creating a very lovely effect.

E: You have painted in Spain. Was the light different there?

A: How I perceive the air really depends on how I feel, and I feel much better close to the sea. Inland areas are hot and dry and arid and there is a lot less stuff in the air unless it’s dust, and then the air is of a different color. It doesn’t have a cool cast, or at sunset it doesn’t have the warm clear light like at Pebble Beach.

E: How about people? I know that the three pieces I have were done at a farmers’ market. Do you still go among people to paint them?

A: I do. I have recently developed a technique of sitting and sketching people that I add later in the landscape, making for a much more realistic person. To get the sketch done, rather than keeping up with the person who is really moving, and make that come through in the painting, it tends to end up a little…it is not satisfactory to me anymore. I will also take pictures, sketch from the pictures and then put them it in the painting. That works really well for me.

E: How do pastels compare to oils, as a medium?

A: I started doing pastels almost overnight and I didn’t do oils again until just a few months ago. I have been painting exclusively with pastels for the past two years and I absolutely love it. One reason is because it brings up my drawing ability and lets me use the mark and the line in a way that I can’t do well with paint. Also pastel immediately solved all oil mixing problems, problems that incurred when mixing the paints together. Everything gets mucky and dirty and every time I mix them, it [purity of the color] steps down a little. I don’t mix my pastels, I may color them over each other but the color is as pure as the stick. It bypasses the whole color mixing process and makes painting a lot faster. And as I’m a very fast painter, I really love that pastels support my rhythm.

E: What helps create a suitable environment for making art?

A: I tend to think that being outside in the wind and sun is a suitable environment for making art. No bugs, not too much hot sun, and no hypothermia. All those things help.

E: So you don’t paint in the rain?

A: I actually do paint in the rain occasionally and I just to contradicted myself. I find that painting under really adverse circumstances makes for an excellent painting because you paint as fast as possible. No indecision. Rather a clear crisp “I’m going to paint for twenty minutes then get back in the car.” The other suitable environment for painting is in here, in my studio. It is very peaceful and quiet, and I listen to music or NPR. There is just something neat about painting in here.

E: What is the mental state in which you paint?

A: Kind of a happy calm energy. I don’t know if you have read Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life.  He wrote about being creative and concentrated in a very focused way, and I try to be that way it is essentially an active state of meditation.   I recently realized that what looks life uncaring carelessness when I paint is really an attempt to stay in the flow… to not let the creative river be disrupted.

E: What is your favorite color?

A: A beautiful red-brown. I like warm colors. And I like colors that are so strong that they look like they are emitting a sound.

E: Do you feel like there is a big separation between your life and your work, or is that blended?

A: I actually try and keep a separation between the two. Since I work for myself, I can work anytime and become a workaholic. So I actually keep fairly professional hours. I try to spend time with my husband and my cat on the weekends. I used to go 24/7 when I was working at Stanford full time, and go to classes at San Jose State at night. I also went to class all day on Saturday and then have a morning class on Sunday morning with Sunday afternoon off. Finally I just could not maintain that schedule.

E: Do you talk about art and painting and what you have done during the day with your husband?

A: Absolutely, especially if it has gone well. He knows that I have had a bad day if I say nothing about art.

E: And he connects and understands what you are talking about?

A: Absolutely, Wouters was a collector before he met me. He collects art and is one of these people who walks into a place to buy a piece of art. It was surprising to meet him, let alone marry him.

E: What do you see as the boundaries of your art?

A: Right now my art is expanding in a whole new direction. I don’t know what will happen. But what needs to happen in the next year is that I need to be recognized nationally. I have seen my own regional market and mailing list expand.

E: How do you do that?

A: I have no idea or I would have done it by now. I do a lot of exhibits, competitions and I travel a lot for my artwork. It really is a profession, as well as an enjoyment.

E: Is it difficult for artist to self promote their art?

A: I don’t have as much trouble with it as most people do, but that doesn’t mean it is not difficult. For me I don’t feel like it is impossible. I don’t feel the need to deputize someone else to promote my art for me. And indeed if I were a gallery owner I would not want to talk to my husband, I would want to talk to me. I would feel very judgmental as a woman who got someone else to talk for me. I promote my own art and I don’t really have a hard time with someone rejecting it. Because I try not to affiliate my art with my ego, I would much rather have an honest no than a promise to take it and let it end up in someone’s backroom. I much prefer someone to say no it’s not my thing. I have really no problem with rejection. My art has been rejected a lot and it doesn’t hurt that much.

E: How does Open Studio work for you?

A: Open Studio really works well. I think that its purpose of a moneymaker is kind of over and its real purpose is to show my friends and family and the public at large what I am doing. Also, Open Studio helps me organize my mind. I hang everything on the wall and think about it. For some reason, taking it all out of storage and hanging it up all at once is very articulate. This studio has given me a place to do that. At home I would just put a painting on my easel and then put it away. Here I hang everything in progress on the wall and see that my art hangs together much better as a result. I can work in a series.

E: Imagine yourself as a branch in a family tree made up of artists. Who makes up other branches and the trunk?

A: The groups of artists that I paint with today are twigs on my branch. There is actually a resurgence of artists, kind of a renaissance of artists right here in the valley. There are five or six of us who are friends and paint together. I think that we are all quite good, and myself the least of them. There is Nancy Macdonald, who is an excellent oil and pastel painter. Nancy is my inspiration for vivid, vivid color and for unusual compositions. Also Kim Fancher Lordier is an excellent pastelist and essentially my primary peer reviewer because she and I paint together a lot. The florals and landscapes you see have a lot of her influence in them. Terry Ford s another good local pastel painter who is doing awesome city nightscapes with an abstract twist.

E: Have you been feeling surrounded like this since you moved into this studio?

A: No, these are all Plein Air friends and we have been painting together a lot. From a more traditional sense, you can definitely see that my work is inspired by the Impressionists. A lot of my color sense comes from them and the people right after them like John Sargeant, Andrew Zorn, who is a Swedish artist who is not mentioned often enough. And Joaquin Sorolla from Spain. All the artists that I love are personable people and I try to emulate them in my work as well as in the way I run my life. Monet and Sorolla were both very  happy people. Mary Casset really loved her family as you can see in her paintings. And so I look for artists that are not suffering or tortured but that are living happy fulfilled lives, because that’s what seems way more fun to me.

E: What advice would you give a budding artist?

A: The thing about me that I find most valuable is that I separate my ego from my art. People can say whatever they want about my art, it doesn't hurt me. I don’t get a self-esteem blow because someone will have said “Oh, that one’s awful.” Or someone says that the new direction I’m taking is bad. Or the color is all wrong. I try to completely separate my ego from my art. There are people who sign up for a workshop and who will not accept the teacher’s advice. They’ll say that they don’t paint like that and I wonder what they are doing in the workshop. You have to have an open heart and mind to learn something. I have no problem with learning from other people and I have no wish to invent painting from scratch. If I could take a workshop from Monet I would.

E: That is interesting. Generally people would say that someone’s art is their ego or their soul.

A: Your ego isn’t your soul. My self-confidence does not come from my art. Yes, I am happy when it goes well and I feel good about myself. But I won’t be utterly destroyed if someone doesn’t like my art or tries to make me paint a different way. When I take a workshop, I try to become that person for that time. Then I go home and paint the way I choose and the information that I learned is absorbed into my general skill set.

E: Well I have known you for a few years, and your art has a definite progression. There are no hiccups in your work, or your style. Even when you transitioned from oil to pastel, there is still your touch. You have a thread somewhere even if you pick up stuff from teachers; you still integrate it into something stronger than anything someone can teach you.

A: I know a lot of artists that are trying very hard to become their teachers. I do that for the space of time that I am studying with them, but I don’t have any long-term goal to become a painter just like my teacher. I am just not that kind of person.

E: Tell me about soul, do you sometimes think of your art as a part of your soul?

A: At the risk of sounding stubborn, I am not someone that puts a lot of emotion into how I think of art. I am very sad when it isn’t going well. Since I am a non-philosophical person; I don’t rely much on fate. For me art is something very fun and interesting to do, an intellectual challenge in some way but also a rewarding energetic expression.  I am sure my “soul” is embedded in my art, but I don’t really try to put it there.

E: What was the best advice you ever received from someone that helped you in your body of work?

A: The thing I really carry with me everyday is the knowledge that inspiration will hit anytime. If I really don’t feel like doing anything, I’ll brush off some pastels or sort a stack of paintings or squeeze my paints out. And that will give me what I need to start.  The two best pieces of advice I ever received were “just begin” and “cover miles and miles of canvas”.

E: Thank you, Anne. Good luck.

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