Welcome to the 272nd installment of A View From the Easel, a series in which artists reflect on their workspace. This week, artists draw strength from evergreen trees and use water as a medium for expression.
Want to take part? Check out our submission guidelines and share a bit about your studio with us through this form! All mediums and workspaces are welcome, including your home studio.
Barbara Sapienza, Sausalito, California
How long have you been working in this space?
Thirty years, wow!
Describe an average day in your studio.
I don’t have a set time in my home studio. Often I’m working on more than one painting at a time, following my inner muse. I use oil on Huille, a paper treated for oil paint. And sometimes I paint on a 51-by-51-inch piece, which I pin to a piece of core board. I listen to the birds in the trees and sometimes a deer will stop by and surprise me.
How does the space affect your work?
I love my space and yet sometimes painting in a class with others inspires me, too.
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
I have joined a group of artists in a studio we rent from the College of Marin. We are a teacherless class, and you can find 12 of us on most Fridays painting together.
What do you love about your studio?
I love the view from the doorways of Liveoaks — trees always green, even in the winter months when birds forage in the leaves.
What do you wish were different?
I’m quite satisfied, grateful for a place to mess with paints, to splash and drip, and even pour paint at times.
What is your favorite local museum?
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
What is your favorite art material to work with?
Oil paint; Sennelier is my favorite.
Zeinab Shahidi Marnani, Provincetown, Massachusetts
How long have you been working in this space?
Over a year.
Describe an average day in your studio.
Here in Provincetown, I’ve found it satisfying to start the day by walking toward the beach and visiting the ocean and the wide sky. The first part of the day goes quietly and easily for me. That’s when I let myself develop my perception, or freely experiment with the works in progress. I work on several projects simultaneously, looking at and rethinking them. I normally break my day into two halves. I start the second half in the evening. I enjoy breaking the dark and silence to make and build. I listen mostly to traditional Iranian music while working, which generally includes ancient poems by Hafez, Saadi, or other poets. Some layers of those poems are only revealed after listening to them many times. And sometimes, I find them in dialogue with my work.
How do you interact with the environment outside your studio?
As a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center artist residency, my studio is surrounded by nine studios of other artists, poets, and writers. We live and work together for seven months in this quiet time of the year in a town on the tip of Cape Cod, famous for being at “the end of the earth.” We meet in a lounge where we cook and eat together, watch movies and gather around a ping pong table. Some of us work together in the print shop. It is a flow between the solitude of studio practice, meeting with the community, and building individual friendships.
What do you love about your studio?
The stunning light, especially in the afternoon, and when it’s a difficult time of the day as the sun is setting, the view of the top of multiple trees from my window. I also love the fact that it’s been a place of creating art for many years.
What do you wish were different?
I wish the world were different and that humans were able to have their most basic right to live their life.
What is your favorite local museum?
Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) is the only local museum in the town. The museum has simple yet beautiful architecture on the ground, which fascinates me every time I visit. You do not need to walk up a single stair to enter the museum and see the exhibitions. PAAM presents FAWC visual artists in a group show every year from January through March. This will be my second year exhibiting at PAAM, since I am a returning fellow to this program. Initially, it was an odd experience, as we come from different perspectives, and it is hard to see all our works in one single show in the first half of our program. But over time, it starts making sense, and it helps us see our being here as a whole.
What is your favorite art material to work with?
For over a decade, my primary medium was “time.” During the last five years, my primary material has switched from time to “light,” which varies from sources like fire to how our vision functions. The most recent material I started to work with here is water. Water, as something you can draw over its surface or transfer patterns through, has become my actual medium.
