Meet Mark Mehaffey
Next week, November 25th, we’ll be releasing my conversation with Mark Mehaffey.
So this week, let’s meet the artist, check out his work, and get ready for a great conversation.
Mehaffey paints in many styles. He calls them his compartments and they span media and subject.
For example, he paints in watercolor and acrylic and mixed media. He paints en plein air and in the studio. He paints landscapes, still life and nonrepresentational (abstract) just to name a few.
Mehaffey doesn’t follow the conventional advice to pick one subject and paint it. He knows that he’d need several lifetimes to paint everything he wants to. He wouldn’t be happy spending this life on only one subject and in one medium.
So he doesn’t.
In the interview, we’ll be focusing a bit on his plein air work but we sneak in several of his other compartments as well.
Mehaffey came to plein air in large part because of his love of the outdoors. He grew up on a huge tract of land and was allowed to explore it on his own. As an adult, he’s an avid fisherman. So plein air is a great marriage of the things Mehaffey loves: art and being outside.
It also works well for forcing Mehaffey to work quickly, to not overthink, and to simplify. And all of these work toward telling the story of the painting.
We revisit this idea again and again in the interview: Mehaffey decides the story of the painting and then paints to it. That story may be about the sparkle of water. It may be about the mood the mist creates. It may be about the light hitting a single tree. It could also be about small shapes or big shapes. It could be about the color orange.
Whatever it is, Mehaffey decides it before he begins. Then he uses his composition, colors and values to make sure the viewer knows where to look. He puts things in. He takes things out. He is not beholden to what is in front of him. He changes anything he needs in order to make a good painting that tells that specific story. This is a liberating idea to the artist and especially to his students.
Learn more about ideas to liberate your painting by listening to my conversation with Mark Mehaffey coming Nov. 25th. If you’d like the interview sent straight to your inbox, add your name and email below and you’ll be getting an email next week Monday!