Portland Art Gallery Artist: Emma Ballou

So it's a wonderful pleasure to be talking with you today. So happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, thank you for coming. You are a Maine woman just like me. Oh, you are? Yes, absolutely. You grew up in Buxton, which is a pretty rural part of the world here. For Maine, for this part of Yeah, for southern Maine, for sure. Northern Maine might have a different opinion, but yes. Yeah, no, that's true. They would argue that Buxton is really not that rural at all. But yeah, it is an interesting little pocket, right, in southern Maine, which is more metro than other places. So tell me about that. How did you decide as growing up in Buxton? I would like to be an artist and I would like to maintain my connection to this wonderful state. So I was lucky enough to be surrounded by artists growing up, like my aunts and uncles, my grandparents, a lot of artists in our family. So I remember a really young age having original artwork in my bedroom growing up, and now it's just like, oh, that's so rare. But I had no idea how unique and special that was. Buxton, my parents came from out west Ohio and kind of followed my uncle out here and we loved it. We were very much in horses and being outside, and I was kind of allowed to run free a lot as an only child too. So I had a really deep connection to the Maine landscape, especially my trees were friends. But yeah, art was a big part of that, and I'm really grateful that Maine has so much. I took classes at Maine College of Art as well in high school, and it really fostered both for inspiration but also for technique and everything. So it's a great spot. So it's funny when you say my parents came out from out west Ohio. That's not necessarily where I think of as out west, but it's certainly west of here. Does your family still have connections out there? Yeah, they do. Not as much as they used to. They're kind of spread out in South Carolina and Vermont especially, but we actually have a lot of family in Maine now, so it makes visiting everybody a lot easier. And having spent some time out in that part of the west that there is a pretty significant difference in the landscape from being out there and here. Certainly beautiful in own way, but have you spent enough time out in that part of the world to have noticed the contrast yourself? Not so much in the Midwest, but I did leave Maine for about 13 years. So I went to college down in Baltimore area at Goucher College, and then, so I lived in Baltimore and then DC for a while, and then I moved to Long Island, New York for quite a while on the east end and worked as a museum curator out there, actually historical museum curator. So I had about 13 years away from Maine, and every time I would come home I would get really emotional because I would see the big pine trees and there was just something in me that needed to be near that. So I really did notice it more so inside of me than mentally, I guess. Well, especially if the trees are your friends. So you have to leave and you're leaving your friends behind, which I think that's an interesting, having wandered the Maine woods for many, many years myself, I have exactly that same sense that obviously you go someplace and there's buildings and you say that's a landmark, but if you're outside and you say, oh, that's the watcher tree, the one that has the eyes, and here's the tree that it always blooms in the spring. So I do think that there's that ongoing interface with, even though there's living creatures that don't move, they're still very much a part of our external world. There's so much loving and noticing of things. That's how you can love something if you really see it and notice its changes and how even throughout one day how much it can change with lighting and shadows and all of that. I'm latching onto those words because I'm thinking about your work and I'm thinking about the glimmerings that I see in your work and sort of the edges of the day, the liminality of all of it. And so as you're talking about this, I'm thinking about how you've translated that into the pieces that you create. So talk to me about that and the choices that you've made around way that you express yourself artistically. Sure. It's been quite a journey to get to this point where I am now, and I feel like it's still evolving, but I really do love the blurry, ethereal kind of feeling to landscape where it's defined enough for you to know what it is, but there's so much room for your own interpretation or for you to put your own feelings or memories into the landscape. So I have really bad eyesight, I have very strong contacts in right now, and whenever I don't have my contacts in or I take off my glasses, there's this real beauty that comes with how I uniquely get to see the world in that way. And I think that's part of what I like to share is that clarity brings so much beauty, but so does lacking definition when something isn't quite so clear. I love the way that you can see this as such a significant positive for yourself as opposed to saying, I have bad eyesight I can't see, and it limits me. You say, well, I have the ability to use strong contacts so I can have the eyesight that I need. I need to function. Of course, Yes, I feel the same way about my contacts and my glasses. My eye doctor is somebody that helps me on a regular basis, but also the idea that there's beauty in the way that you already interface with the world, that you don't have to be anybody different than who you already are showing up to be in order to be the type of artist that you are. Yeah, that's really beautifully put. I love just going out into nature and just laying in the grass and without my glasses on and just observing how the light changes and flickers. And I had actually someone like my aunt describe my art in this way, and I really loved it. It's kind of like how if you're walking, going on a hike and you're observing, you're moving, there's movement associated with hiking or walking, but you're still in the atmosphere. You're still engaging with the environment. So it's like you're catching the landscape out of the corner of your eye or you can't quite see it clearly, but you can feel it around you. And I feel like how she described that fits my artwork perfectly. So if it's hanging on your wall in your house, you can kind of feel its presence in that way. You're going on a walk or hiking. When I've seen your pieces, I do think about, it's like the gloaming, the twilight, the movement, and you can almost exist within the passage of time as opposed to if you did a still life where you said, here's a flower, here's a piece of fruit, here's all of which are wonderful and beautiful, and I also still lives. But in your case, there is this sense of motion and also this, I like the idea of sort of out of the corner of your eye. There's almost something mystical about that. And when I think about, I mean, my family a large part of his Irish, so I think about the little people and I think about the possibilities of the magic that exists on the periphery. So I can sort of see that element of life existing within your pieces. I love that love. That's so cool. Some magic is real. Magic exists. I love that. That's so fun. Well, and of course, again, this is my own interaction with your art. It doesn't necessarily have to be the way that you've put it out there in the world, but that for you is also so interesting because when I talk to other artists, there's a difference between what you put out there and how other people interact with your art. Oh, yeah. So tell me about that from your perspective. I think of creating art as that's my time with the painting. When I'm actually in the creation of the process of creating it and the moment it's done, I don't feel like it's mine anymore. It is someone like whoever it was I painted it for, or the universe asked me to paint it for. That's one of my favorite parts of it. Where I get the most joy is the actual creation of it. Once it's done, I'm kind of like, okay, what am I doing next? But then that's just the beginning of its journey. The journey continues for it in someone's home that they feel like a new story with it or a deeper resonance in a different way. So I think that's why I love hearing other people's interpretation because it for me, makes the art feel much more alive than just me creating it and having it be stagnant in that moment. It's journey continues. So I love that. I don't always hear this from people that when they're done, this is okay, my journey with this art is complete and I'm now detaching myself and I'm sending it off into the world. I sometimes hear artists say, I have a hard time letting go of my art. I have a hard time knowing when it's finished. I have a hard time with. So I am wondering for you, how did you get to a place where you can say, we've come so far, this is my time, and now my time has ended, and now you're just go off into the world piece of art and enjoy being with the other people? It kind of starts with how my painting career evolved and how it came to be. My painting started because I was working through anxiety, and it was the best way for me to process my feelings and also just creates a beautiful, happy space for me to exist in. But that was why I really started painting again as I got older. And then, I don't know, just everything started clicking. Once I started doing that and opportunities came to me because I was following that feeling, that knowing, and I think that's why it always felt like there was something larger happening that was calling me to paint. So I think it was never really about the end product from the beginning. It was more about the emotional journey or the creation of it was more like a therapy or a, yeah, something deeper was at play. It's so wonderful that you could give yourself the space to trust that this is what really was going to happen next that was best for you, that you were feeling like something wasn't working. There was an anxiety or processing something, and you said, but here's this thing that does make me feel like this is the right direction to go in. And it's so often that I feel when I talk to lots of people, but particularly patients, it's that dissonance with where they really are meant to be in their life and their lack of ability to give themselves permission to live the lives that really resonate with them. Like a block, right? Anxiety is a big block. But yeah, I feel like it's anxiety is like a block, but also a guiding post that can show you when something isn't working and if you can just get quiet enough, it'll direct you where you're supposed to be if you're lucky, if your brain isn't buzzing with thoughts. But yeah, I really wanted to work for myself and be my own boss. And I think I always loved, art was a constant in my life, but for example, in college, I studied history and was going to be in the museum world, and I loved all of that so much. I still do. And for fun, I just was taking art classes the whole time, so much to the point where I ended up double majoring in it, but I was just doing art for fun, and I did so much of it. I loved it so much, but I think because I had so many other talented artists in my life that I was like, oh, that's them. They're the ones that are the artists, and I'm just kind of dabbling in it. But then life kind of showed me that, no, maybe you got a little bit more to say on this, or maybe you should be spending more and more time doing it. I also find that fascinating, and I don't think it's uncommon, right, that you can say, well, that person has something I don't have. They have more experience, they have more knowledge, they have more, whatever it is. But when it comes to art, just showing up and starting, that's where the possibilities begin. And then over time, it does evolve, but you have to keep showing up and doing it and doing it more and doing it more. Oh, that's so wise. That's totally it. The showing up is what it's all about. Even if you didn't love what you painted or created, it's that dedication or commitment to the showing up. Even if it's tricky or intimidating, that's where all the good stuff happens, right? Stretching in that way. And at the same time, I do love the museum connection, and I do love the idea of curation and of, again, it's almost like surrounding yourself with your friends, the trees, but you're surrounding yourself with your friends, the art. And that is honestly how I feel about art is I look at the original art we have on our walls, and these are the friends that I have that are my art beings that I work with. The witnesses to your life. Yeah, the witnesses. Exactly. That is a great way to put it. And in working with museums, you have a different set of witnesses as you go along. What did you learn from that phase of your life that you've brought forward? Oh, so much. I love stories. And when I was a museum curator, I got to decorate and design different period rooms for different people throughout history. So I got to dig deep into their lives and kind of bring their life to life again. And I think I also just learned a lot about marketing. I was in a small nonprofit, so we all wore every hat available. So I also really love marketing and design, and I think they're all connected, and the more ways that you can express yourself creatively, I think the better. So I love painting. That's my ultimate, but I also really, really love marketing and design. So the museum world kind of showed me that as well. So what is it that you love about the design and the marketing piece? Is it the connection to story? Yeah, I think so. And more about the connection to the feeling of things or making someone feel something or the atmosphere, the mood of the thing. I think it's all connected and all really beautiful and a better way for me to tell my story. Before I was lucky enough to be represented by galleries. I worked incredibly hard to try to tell that story online through marketing. I still do, but I really am grateful for that time because it helped hone in on my style and what I wanted to say as an artist through all of that different creative work to keep honing in on what I was trying to say or the story I was trying to tell. How does your story intersect with the place in which you create your art? You work out of, I believe, a converted barn, which used to house lots of animal lives. So talk to me about that. My partner and I bought a homestead in 2021, and we have been gutting it and rebuilding it, and we were able to also create, we're coffee roasters as well. So we have a coffee roasting business, but attached to our roastery, I have my art studio and we have five goats roaming around outside. We have a massive garden, and we actually bought the house right across the street from my parents' house growing up. So it feels very safe, secure, beautiful. The landscape is very familiar, so it really feels like a piece of me, like a sacred place, a sanctuary, for sure. Well, now I'm really intrigued by this whole coffee roaster piece. I mean, to have that continual, so you've described this sort of visual sense, and also I can kind of hear the goats and I can kind of Oh yeah they're very loud. Yes, I'm sure. Absolutely. But then you have coffee and roasting coffee as you're working. Oh, it smells so good too. It's amazing. Yeah, it's very sensual. There's lots of different things happening on our property and the smell of it, and it's really fun. I think what excites my brain the most isn't always doing the same thing day after day. I really like to mix it up, and I feel like taking a couple days away from painting and working and coffee roasting really actually feeds my creativity instead of distracting it. Yeah, that's just how my brain works. It's nice to bounce around and get inspired by one thing and bring it back to the studio or get down to the world and bring that back into the studio. But the coffee's really fun. Smells great. It's awesome. I'm a little jealous. You can come out anytime. Okay. Alright. That's good. Because I don't think we probably would be doing that ourselves, but I love this idea that this is kind of, you just walk around with this wonderful aroma that kind of perfumes your day. Yeah. I have to remember to leave the house sometimes because just staying in, bouncing around from garden to the animals to coffee to studio, I kind of need to remember to leave too. For me, I also feel this that if I do too many days or hours even of the same thing over and over and over again, then I feel like my brain almost kind of gets stuck in that pattern, even if it's something that I really enjoy doing. But to pull myself out of that space and go do something completely different, it kind of shakes up the, I don't know, the neural pathways enough that it broadens things out for me to be more creative and to actually have more perspective on things. And as I hear you talk about the garden and hanging out with your goat friends and the tree friends, I would think that that would enable you to come back to your painting with almost a different set of eyes every time. Yeah. It gets you outside the studio too, which is where all the inspiration really is for me, at least in nature and lighting. And yeah, my favorite time is golden hour is when I get the most inspired, I would say, or dawn. But usually I'm up more at dusk. So yeah, it provides so much good inspiration. So I try to leave the studio around that time and go for a walk or go for a drive to capture that time, especially When I've seen your pieces. There's almost something photographic about them, but I'm interested in what your process actually looks like. How do you come to the place where you create things that look like they could be almost a blurred out photograph? That's such a good question because I've tried, it doesn't work very well for me to paint without my glasses on. So I've tried that. So what I do is I actually take photographs and then I edit them in a way that kind of is close to how I see it, and then I translate that onto canvas with oil paints generally. That's so fascinating. So there's how you see things with your glasses on how you see things with your glasses off, how the camera sees things that you then kind of pull back to a place of what your glasses off look like, but then you have to put your glasses back on again to actually create it. That whole continuum of visual is such a fascinating idea. And they're all feeding each other, and it's really, I love editing the photographs I take because I can emphasize the atmosphere that I want to create that, because taking, especially on your phone, taking a photograph does not capture the feeling of, at least my photographs do not capture the feeling of the moment well, and it just is flat. So I have learned how to edit my photographs to get them to a place where I can feel them more and that feel more like, because I do need a reference. That's how I work, is that I do need to have something to look at. But I'd say I look at the photograph that I took and edited for, I'd say half of the painting, and then the other half is intuitive based. So it's mostly as a reference to connect me back to that time or that feeling or to remember it. And then the ending is mostly feeling, it's like, does this feel right? Am I feeling the space in the painting? For me, this whole conversation is a great reminder that the way we might as individuals see the world is not the way other people see the world at all. And sometimes it's easy to get stuck in our own perspective as people and think, well, I see the world this way and therefore it must be this way. But when you're talking about not only your process but me in my interactions with your actual end product, it just is like we're all just walking around interfacing with this existence, and we can't have any way of understanding other people's interaction. But what we have is we have art and we have artists who bring their perspectives forwards and we can say, oh, I can really feel that. That is something that to me, works really well. And so when I look at an Emma Ballou piece, and I think that's fantastic, and other people will look at it and they'll say, that's fantastic, but in a different way. I just love that idea. I think that's beautiful. That's so beautifully put. Just how art can connect us all, even though like you're saying, we are all so incredibly different, even though we constantly forget it. But we have so much that unifies us too. And art is so good at that. Emma, it's been a pleasure to have this conversation with you today and to put a, it's usually a name of the face, but for me it's like a name face and a piece. So to make that final connection has really been wonderful for me. So I appreciate your coming on the show today. I love talking with you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been so nice. Thank you. So I encourage you to learn more about her work, go on our website, go to our actual gallery, maybe come to one of our openings, and maybe you'll get a chance to meet Emma. She's a lovely individual and has beautiful art. Thank you very much, Thank you so much for having me.