Dwellings: John Brickels and Emily Passman

Emily Passman

There is a moment while I am painting that I can describe as the highest, or most fulfilled.  It is the moment when I am fully engaged in seeing my subject. The subject, my eye, my arm, my hand, the paintbrush and the canvas are aligned, synchronized in balance. My ego has flown away and I am left painting. It is fully “process versus product.”  From this place always comes a product with which I am pleased. Staying in that balanced state of seeing and painting is the goal.

What initially inspires me to paint is quite simple. It can be shapes created by some un-nameable collection of forms, either in a landscape, interior or still life. It is not the “pretty picture” in it’s entirety, but a pleasing composition I may find within it…where a shadow meets the light, interrupted by a mass of color, or the collective shape in a group of forms. My connection is to the process, and to being able to tell the viewer something they don’t already know about the subject. I am not interested in a pretty picture or an organized still life, but in finding passages and pleasing arrangements within. A shape against a shape, a dark against a light, or a color that strains to be captured and presented again through my brush. It is what I do with the subject that matters to me. A painting that is too explicit is a bore. If my paintings have a feeling of a sketchbook I feel successful.

I do a lot of “plein air” sketching, and teach the process to others. Sketching very often heightens my ability to see. My best work done is when I carry a large canvas and easel to the field, and use my largest brushes.