Hello and welcome to the 69th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed the super talented painter Brenda Ward. Brenda's work is completely different than mine but something about her way of painting has stuck with me and resonated with me from the first time I saw her paintings at Hopkins Center for the Arts with my Dad, and I've enjoyed everything I have seen since. Her answers are fantastic and interesting - thank you for reading! (Photos 1 and 3 courtesy of the artist, 2 and 4 from the Instagram I run with my Dad: @artworldexploration, Artist website: www.brendajwardfineart.com / Instagram: @bjwardfineart
Jackson: Do you feel you were born with artistic skills? Or did something happen in your life that made you want to learn to paint realistically so well? You are very talented.
Brenda: Thank you Jackson for your encouragement and the opportunity to share my life and art!
I do have a few artists on my family, however it was my mother who taught me to draw the human figure at the age of five, which gave me all the confidence to move forward. All throughout school I was known as the artist that was enlisted to make school posters and enter competitions. I grew up in Sacramento and received a bachelor of arts degree from California State University, Sacramento. I then worked as a commercial artist, book cover artist, and muralist. With the encouragement of my husband, I attended the Atelier Studio Program of Fine Art In Minneapolis and happily returned to my artistic roots: painting in oils. I thank the Atelier for teaching me French Academic Drawing with American Impressionism to say that I'm "classically trained". My favorite subjects to paint, that still remains to this day, are portraiture and figurative works.
Jackson: What part, if any, does religion play in your artwork? Do you see it as subject, metaphor or neither? The first painting my Dad and I saw of yours was an Adam and Eve type of scene.
Brenda: Yes, very much so. I'm a Christian and every opportunity that I can get to share my faith through art is a blessing. I've completed a 3 paintings series on Adam & Eve from Genesis and a painting entitled Faithful & True from Revelation, you can also see glimpses of that theme through my other works. I also aspire to bring light and beauty and (hopefully) a story with each painting, especially in the Card Series, and a painting called AI Reflection.
Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be and why?
Brenda: I had to stop and think about about this question. Joaquin Sorolla or John Singer Sargent comes to mind and I would follow them around and watch them paint, ask why they are using that technique or color, how to capture the light and mostly learn to paint more "painterly" by using loose brush strokes! I would like to capture the correct facial features, yet have the rest of the painting in loose but accurate application of paint. I attended a Rembrandt collection at Minneapolis Institute of Art and noticed that his earlier works were very realistic and so were his later works, yet painted very differently with a heavy impasto technique. Never stop learning, I'm a work in progress.
