This May in the Main Gallery we are featuring Core Artists Melissa Shaak and Marcia Wise. Their exhibition, “Out of Nowhere” runs through May 30, 2021 with gallery hours Friday–Sunday from 12–4PM and by appointment. Below the artists engage in a conversation about their work.

Melissa: When did you know you would be a painter?

Marcia: I was 9 years old when I knew I would be a painter. As a child I was a musician want-to-be. I was painfully shy and yet music was a constant within my family of musicians and designers. I started studying piano and guitar at 5, but by age 6 it was evident to my mother that my shyness would be a deterrent. I was 7 when, on a visit to the local library with my mom, I found the art section and a particularly large book about impressionism with many fold-outs of paintings. I began to ask about taking painting lessons and learning about this style of painting because the vibrant color and light spoke to me. Provincetown, Massachusetts was vibrant with creativity and at 9 I found myself taking weekly classes at The Cape Cod School of Art, then owned and run by Henry Hensche. He was protege to American Impressionist Charles Hawthorne who originally started the school. At 10 years old, I decided I would attend L’Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France to earn my undergrad degree in painting. This was much to the dismay of my mother. I was an only child, growing up with my divorced mother and her parents, Italian immigrants. But against all odds, I saw my dream manifest. I never doubted it happening and it became a positive focus during my youth. However, I continued studying music well into my college years and beyond.

Marcia working on Maestoso — Marcia working on *Maestoso*

Marcia: How did you become involved with making art?

Melissa: My artmaking journey began just over 10 years ago, by accident, or seemingly by accident. I love to tell the story—I was having dinner with my friend Marika Geoghegan who described using paint colors in her work with hospice patients. She would take paints, paper and a brush, and work with people one-on-one. She would start by asking, “What color wants to go first?” Then, “What color wants to go next?” “Do the colors want to touch, mix, or stay separate?” She found that, even in the very last days and weeks of life, people had clear preferences—it resonated with something deep, true and profound. After that dinner conversation I went home and felt a powerful longing, hoping against hope that someone, somehow, would know to do that for me when I was dying. Waking up the next morning, I realized, wow, maybe I didn’t have to wait until I was dying! I called my friend, we got together, and she started me on my painting journey. I will be forever grateful for that.

Marika Geoghegan with Jade — Marika Geoghegan with *Jade*

Melissa: How are you able to capture movement so beautifully?

Marcia: Now this has something to do with music as I’ve always looked for ways to meld the two together - painting and music. Being married to a professional musician, I often hear live music while working in my home studio, or I listen to recorded music, and I find both help me in expressing movement in my work through rhythm. If I’m moving, the painting is moving. I think another aspect of capturing movement in my work stems from growing up on the ocean where I spent many hours staring out to sea, watching the ebb and flow, feeling the energy and changes, the many moods of the sea, and being mesmerized by the reflections produced from objects, like building, pilings, wharfs, boats and buoys, as well as from sheer light or lack thereof. These things are evident in some of my earlier work when I worked with the reflections of boats in water, and then later I experimented with representing the abstract qualities of water itself minus the boats. While studying with the fabulous painter Janet Fish, it was the reflective, abstract qualities from the dance of light on objects that brought movement first into my thought processes about my own work. Movement, light, color, how form is created. These are what I attribute my ability and my continued desire to capture and express movement in my paintings.

Melissa: How did your exquisite sense of color and light evolve?

Marcia: Thank you so much, Melissa, for asking this question. It’s been life-long, my dance with color and light. My first teacher, when I was 9, is the true reason behind lighting this spark within me. I saw it in the impressionists’ paintings and I wanted to know how to do that. Henry Hensche, then running The Cape Cod School of Art, agreed with my mother to try me out as a young student in one of his summer workshops. Even though Henry wasn’t too interested in children, I was a different kind of kid, emotionally older than my years, so he was kind to me, and later he was difficult because he said I had promise. So he pushed me.

What he did was he gave me the understanding of color and how form, broken down to the very basics, is made with use of light and understanding how to see and create color tonality and values. During the first month under his tutelage, I was instructed to mix colors. That’s all I did, beginning with the primaries, through the color wheel and as I accomplished each step he began to place simple objects in front of me like a red block, partly in the light, allowing some mid-tone, and partly in the shade and tell me to mix those colors exactly as I saw them. Then he’d go off to help others and return later to see how I was doing. He always asked helpful questions before making corrections and I liked this teaching style of "leading one to see”. He taught me how to see color. It was magical at 9 years old! The second summer I went there, he made me create my own color value chart with at least 9 values of each color in my palette from light to dark. At 10, that was a bit of a brain twist for me, but I was focused and determined, which is why I think Henry liked me. Besides this first teacher, after college I returned to the school and discovered the teacher, Lois Griffel, who had also studied with Hensche and later ran his school. She carried color a bit further for me in her impressionist plein air workshops, and it was wonderful to return to my childhood school which, then, looked as it did when I was a kid. A year later, while living and working in New Mexico, I was accepted into a 2-week workshop at the Art Institute of Santa Fe with Wolf Kahn. More color experiments and for me, infusing light into everything which later lead me to study with Janet Fish and then it all came together…. light, color, form, reflection, refraction, like my entire life flashing before me. I will always attribute these things, and my awakening into color, light and form to Henry, and to the good luck of being raised on the ocean with its myriad qualities.

Marcia: Tell me about your approach to your work - how do you work? What inspires you? Do you have an idea beforehand or does it evolve as you work, or both? How do you begin a painting?

Melissa: I occasionally carry a glimpse of something to try when I go to the studio. But usually I just start laying down paint on a couple of sheets of paper at a time, looking and responding with other colors, shapes, lines, again and again, continuing until I feel like I’ve got something interesting enough to really work with and refine. It’s intuitive and improvisational, and there are many layers and iterations. My eye is getting better at knowing when I have something, or what to try when I don’t. The frustrating times lead, eventually, to moments of breakthrough—as in, this one is SO bad, why not just go for broke? I know when a painting is done when I like looking at it for a long time, today, tomorrow and the next day. It’s as if everything in it was meant to be there.

Melissa: What inspired your newest paintings? How do they fit into the progression of your work?

Marcia: A few things inspired the new work. The first was walking in the woods and being caught in a windstorm, out of nowhere, as the sky slowly darkened and the wind gained strength. I was riveted in place watching the trees, leaves, all the chaos of nature slowly churning before me. That was a turning point as a strong intuitive feeling of change swept through me. I didn’t know then that my husband was to become ill and be diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, and that our journey together was about to change direction. My paintings in “Out of Nowhere” represent a comparison in my experience with life’s uncertainties both in nature and within our lives. I have used this as a take-off point for this work…there is a story line hinted within the titles which are musical terms in Italian. (Music again.) Since childhood, the woods have provided me solace and a sense of being at home. This resurgence of a sense of private sanctuary has helped me to steady and relax my mind so that I can turn my attention to a more abstract, freer approach to painting. I see these new paintings fitting perfectly into the progression of my work. Reflection, light, movement, color, all these have been with me for years as I develop new ways of playing with concepts and ideas. I have wanted more freedom to be expressed in my work, so I have pushed this by changing my approach and some techniques, as well as using longer brushes and standing back from the canvas while working, using strokes of colors, side by side, layer upon layer until resolution is found.

Marcia: How did the cutouts evolve and what inspired you to create them? In what ways have you played with them for others to see, and what types of reactions have you received? What is your hope for viewers during the exhibit?

Melissa: I couldn’t stop looking at the painting “La Nuit” (The Night) by Georges Braque, which features a large figure with three strands of hair flowing unnaturally from one side of the head. These strands were the inspiration for the cutouts. “La Nuit” is a complicated painting, and though I was able to grasp only that one simple part, it still gave me something to work with. I took a few of my discarded paintings—which had layers and layers of amorphous color and no discernable shape--and “cutout” the figure, including three strands of hair à la Braque. I added other colors and features to enhance the “personality” that took shape in each painting. Each also has a name and a haiku poem. For me these figures are trusted, powerful presences, akin to archetypes. I think they are here to help, to guide, to light and lead the way. It is my deep hope that they resonate in this way for others too.

Melissa: How and why does the title “Out of Nowhere” resonate with you?

Marcia: The title “Out of Nowhere” resonates completely with me in terms of my experience of my husband’s illness with cancer. It has been many months of intensity, more severe at the beginning when the doctors still had no diagnosis - that unknown time was the worst, to new normals and even those continue to be in flux. Life is so fragile, we can forget. At any moment for any one of us, life can present its uncertainties that change us forever. My comparison here is how as if “out of nowhere” and in a flash, change can sweep us off our feet just as the wind in the woods can churn the ethers stormy to cause such chaos and change in that environment. And how many times have I heard myself say that phrase, “out of nowhere?”

I think our work connects visually through color, line, contrast and movement. My windy trees love how your imagery either has hints of movement in wind (via hair) or is lighting/leading the way (cut outs stepping out) through the environment. My environments are chaotic while yours offer a calmer, more poised effect as if saying “follow me, follow the light, this way, etc.” For me the effect is almost saying “don’t let a little wind throw you off, follow me, this way!”

Marcia: How has this experience of sharing an exhibition with another gallery member been for you, thus far?

Melissa: You know I fell head over heels for your painting “Crescante” before I ever knew who you were. I saw the image online, and was so drawn to it that I went to see it. And then I met you—not that day, but later, at Fountain Street! I was kind of awestruck. Your use of color and light is extraordinary. Knowing that I would be exhibiting with you has really motivated and inspired me to do the best work I can do. And I realized along the way that it wasn’t about making my work look like yours, but about finding my own artistic voice and pursuing it, as you have, to create a distinctive body of work.

Marcia: Please tell me a little about how you became interested in learning other media types, like animation and video, and how has this had an effect upon you and your work?

Melissa: The cutout figures led me step by step. When they first came off the wall and into the world as, shall I say, “extrapolated sculptures,” the next steps followed very quickly. They, the cutouts, “wanted” to do all kinds of things (please excuse the anthropomorphization, but that’s how I have experienced it). I photographed them in different settings and formations. That led to wanting to capture the movement around them, thus the videos on my iphone. The cutouts have taken the subway, gone to the hairdresser, the theatre, climbed on rocks, and stood among trees in the wind, as in your paintings. And now they’re standing tall and proud in the gallery, thanks to the fine metalwork of Alaina Mahoney of A.M. Design and Fabrication.

Alaina Mahoney with Françoise — Alaina Mahoney with *Françoise*

I imagined organizing the photos and videos together in a montage, like a home movie, to have available for viewing in a corner of the gallery, as an add-on to our show. But in talking with our Fountain Street colleague Allison Maria Rodriguez, she encouraged me to take the video idea seriously as an art form, to think of it as an integral part of the installation. With that encouragement I attended a “hatchery” session at Puppet Showplace Theatre in Brookline, where the fantastically creative Roxie Myrhum and Sarah Nolen immediately embraced the cutouts and could see their theatrical potential. When we shot the video, Sarah did all of the staging and tech and camera work—I’m so grateful for that collaboration, as well as for the collaboration with Greta Bro, who did the gorgeous music.

Melissa: Why does painting matter to you?

Final layer/Finish Maestoso — Final layer/Finish *Maestoso*

Marcia: On a personal level, painting matters to me because it helps me to know who I am. It brings joy, even more with good challenges met in the process. To be able to express oneself while loving the process and being rewarded by process, is wonderful, no matter the art form. I often meditate before going into the studio and on occasion that feeling of peaceful ease stays with me also allowing me to relax the mind, letting thought go - that’s when time flies by unnoticed, and what I call “the magic hour” (although it can be many hours). My studio, like the woods, is another sanctuary. As an educator, and lover of different cultures, art marks who we are as a people, and as a culture; a passage of time, and ideology. These are important as historical markers of the changes in our humanity, just look back at art history. Also, as an educator, the arts bring us together into a unity that is at best transportive, at worst questioning - both explorations provide us with more abilities to focus, concentrate, think creatively, problem solve, and to stretch the mind to think outside the box.

Melissa: What is a favorite piece of advice that you give to your students?

Marcia: My advice to my students, particularly for young women just starting out, I would say first and foremost be true to yourself. Work, work, work, work! Through hard work, through the actual discoveries while painting, you will find your “authentic voice,” your authentic you and way of working, and it takes discipline and structure to work hard. You may learn all the valuable things needed from others as you go along, but don’t copy them. Instead, use them, incorporate them by trying them out in your own way of working. Be your original, unique self. That is your gift to the world. After all, there is only one of you in all the world! It takes patience, commitment, discipline and the growing of some tough skin. I think that women today are in a much better place than before, however we are still in a struggle to gain equality. We know we are all equal, but the world is full of games. Do not fall for those! Never lower yourself or your standards to get where you want to go. Be courageous and work hard, do the homework, find where you fit in best. There is no easy way just as there is no smooth road. If you love what you do, if you have true passion for it, then work hard knowing you can do what is in your heart. What stops us is only ourselves. The choice is fear or love. It is not about what others say, or the attitudes, the thoughts, the negativity, the boundaries that are always trying to be imposed upon us as women. Don’t allow fear to enter. Be smart. Be really smart! Find ways, invent new ways, step outside the boxes, to make a decent living and support your passion while you are working toward your goals. There is no need to suffer to be an artist! Not in terms of having less than, looking less than – for me, that has always been a lie and very detrimental. Women in the arts is a necessity to effect positive forward progress in all cultures in our world today and to reach across boarders so that we can pull everyone into a more unified humanity.

Out of Nowhere: A Conversation with Melissa Shaak and Marcia Wise