Portland Art Gallery Artist: Mary Lynn Burke

And today it is my great pleasure to introduce you to Mary Lynn Burke, who is one of our newest artists here at the Portland Art Gallery. Thank you so much for coming in today. Thank you for having me. What I love about your background is that you've done quite a few different things, but social work that is not one that I hear every day from artists. So you had been interested in education and children and social work. Tell me about that and then the leap over into art. I was always the one at family get togethers who wanted to watch the younger kids. I liked that role and so I think that started my, and then my aunts and uncles would kind of say, oh, can you watch so-and-so at the party and kind of made me feel like I was doing something really important. So that's probably where that started. And then, I knew, I just love this age, the young preschool age, and so I started doing that. Even in high school, I would leave an hour early and go for the job, leave school an hour early and work at the preschool and then went into teaching preschool. And then as I was in college, I realized just more learning about how to teach math or how to teach, it wasn't really, it actually wasn't my strong suit, but when I was teaching was just that one-on-one connection of the kids who had something that was maybe a need that went beyond the scope of the academics. And I was doing nanny kind of work, not live in, but I was working during college. I did a lot of nanny work and one of the people that I worked for, one of the families, she was a therapist, she was a social worker, and we just got talking and she would say, gosh, you're so good with the kids in this way, in that way. And just the more I started saying, oh, I don't know about this teaching math stuff or whatever subject it was. So yeah, I switched my major and when I did switch to social work third year of undergrad, I knew it was a match because it somehow was easy and just felt like an instinctual kind of writing these papers and the topics were more aligned for me, so I knew where I needed to be. And then you go along and you have to figure out, well, what do you want to do next? And grad school was an easy next step. So I had a little bit of time off in between undergrad and grad school and went right into a concentrated 10 month program for grad school. And that's where I started the focus on clinical. And I worked at a therapeutic preschool, which one of the women was trained. She trained with Anna Freud. So it was a really excellent opportunity and good training there. I loved working with the families, but there wasn't a lot of work and I wanted to get into it a lot more diagnostically and just get more training. So I did then work with adults and, and then I worked in adoption, foster care, and I was inner city Detroit, kind of going through these houses to get licensed for foster homes, which was very eyeopening to see what was really going on in the community in that space. We're walking into these homes and seeing those needs, and I enjoyed that. And then I worked with teen girls in residential work, residential facility as a therapist and having families come in for that. So a lot of group and family work became important as well. And then the hours, however, where it seemed endless, I couldn't really turn it off. I found myself I was staying off hours all the time because I would spend all the time or in the groups and then just the paperwork kind of part was what I would save it seemed like for the after hours because I just wanted to make sure I was giving the girls and the families what they needed. So I then took a job, which was a real turn, but I'm really glad I did. Ended up where I met my husband, but I went and worked at one of the hospitals in inner city Detroit and as a social worker in the cardiac unit and telemetry. And then for the first year, and then from there I went into the OB and the neonatal intensive care unit for the last two years. So that job, child protective services, and there was a lot to see and learn in that job. It was very separate from any, because we would cover through the whole hospital. So it was definitely a specialty role as that social worker. I learned so much there. And I met my husband there. He was doing his residency. He's from New England. And then we ended up here because we traveled through, he would take me when he would visit family, and I fell in love with Boston, and we moved to Boston in 2004 And while we were living here, so I was always working, like I mentioned these jobs, I was waitressing, I was doing nanny work, I was doing so many different things, always had a couple jobs going on. And so there was this period of time where I had a few months off after we moved here and I was, what do I do with myself? This is unusual to have time like that. So we had a little digital camera and I was going around spending so much time with it. I took a night photography course and the professor said, you should consider the full-time program. And I was taking dark room classes and working with film, and I was working at Children's Hospital in Boston at the time. I left the job and I went for that program, and it was a big step, but a real, I knew there was no other option. It was calling me so deeply and it was speaking to something that I never really tapped into this creative side, and it was self-reflection, whereas all my work had always been about others. And this was something I hadn't really explored. Your husband is an emergency room emergency medicine physician? Yes, correct. That's right. So I really hope someday that you have a chance to meet my daughter-in-Law, Danny, who's a social worker, and my son who's an emergency medicine physician. What a world. What a world. And he currently works at Boston, so it's so many things going on. It was such a special place. But it's so interesting hearing you talk because when my husband and I visited for the residency graduation, and I would watch Danny and Campbell talk back and forth, and the language of medicine and the language of social work are so they're aligned, but different. And the language I would hear them using across the table was so fascinating to me, and it was so wonderful to know that you could approach the care of humans from such different perspectives. And just knowing that you and your husband have had that kind of parallel path is really interesting to me. Yes, it is. And it was interesting. We were both very private people in the workplace especially. So I think we both kind of were to even want anyone to know we're dating. And I was kind of like, I don't want to date somebody in this. We were both, it turned out we found out pretty quickly. We both wanted everything to stay really private, but we would work together. So he was doing his residency, so he was only on the telemetry unit for a month that I remember he had this presence and he consulted me, but we never connected at that time. But yeah, I think that then later after we were dating and he was doing his rotation through the neonatal intensive care unit, I mean, I did feel like this is a really special thing that him and I, we could work together. He has an incredible work ethic and his heart is in his work as much as mine is, and that was just nice to see. And so now to this day, we can have that conversation together and understand each other in a unique way. And both of those are challenging professions in different ways, but both of them are incredibly intense when it comes to, again, caring for humans in a really special way. You're entering people's lives at a time that can be really challenging for them, whether you're going to somebody's home as a social worker or whether you're in the neonatal unit and this time of birth. But birth into sometimes great difficulty is similar to people showing up in the emergency department as what they often will say is the worst day of their life. So being able to interface at that level, to have that sensitivity and that resilience is amazing. I feel like I did miss it. I missed my moment. One of the things was we rotated throughout the whole hospital. The Emergency room has its own social workers, so I never actually saw him in the ED, but we have this unique experience to have worked in Detroit together specifically. It's a really special community. They have their own unique needs, every city does. But I think that we go back to that time a lot and think about what that community needed that was different than some of the things we see here. And just that the culture that is just this warmth and just that connection that we had with the people that we worked with, the nurses and the staff and some of the family dynamics that would come in that just these strong bonds and And then also a lot of violence, a lot of things that you just never think you could never imagine that you're seeing. Yeah. But I think there's a lot of change happening in Detroit at the moment. So we're both feeling really excited and watching what's happening there. And my family's all still in Michigan, so yeah, we're back there as much as we can. You also shared early adventures and adventures in New Zealand, for example, as a family, as a couple. Tell me how that has influenced not only your perspective on life, but also potentially your perspective on being an artist. Oh, it was a profound impact on all of us. So from 2019 to 2021, we lived there. So our kids were just turned 10 and just turned eight. And leading up to it, I think my husband and I we're outdoor people we're active people. We love camping and biking and all these things. And I think he was feeling a little, both of us just felt like we were ready for a change. I love travel, I love travel planning. So we had never gone that far. And it's funny, we had never really taken our kids that far flying, I think out to the west coast once, we had gone to Aruba. We hadn't gone to many places with the kids yet. So New Zealand was a really far stretch. But I just started doing this research, where could we live? Let's try something. Let's try living abroad. And on our honeymoon, we went to French Polynesia, and I remember we had a travel planner at the time, and she said, do you want to go to New Zealand? And we were like, well, yeah, but that's like its own special trip, but someday we're going to get there because you're so close. But I think we were like, we just want to relax and beach. And we did do some hikes and some adventures, but it was just another seven hour flight, right? So, so I had started researching this going to New Zealand, and it turned out his work was on their shortlist for needs. My job could transfer. I wasn't working. I was a stay at home mom strictly and an artist at the time, mostly just doing photography and some mixed media work, but I hadn't even ever painted really, except for maybe a little bit with caustic. So yeah, just through the research I found out this is an option, and he said, well, let's go. We'll take a reconnaissance trip and we'll go see if this is really, because he was really intrigued. And we went, we loved it. We went for two weeks, we loved it. And then we came back and we said, let's see what this takes to get visas. So we went through the process, he got the job, and when he got the job offer, we were just, okay, this is real. So the kids are getting fingerprinted, everything you do for the visas. So we went and we ended up in this really, really beautiful area of New Zealand that's pretty removed from the rest of the north island. You have to go through a long gorge, twisty, turny, couple three hours to get in and out of it. So it was so special and a lot of a large population of indigenous Maori population lived there. So it had all the beautiful culture that we were looking for and beaches and surfing, which we had never done. And so we were just, and it was June before the pandemic, so we were there in a great timeframe, but just it was quiet. We didn't really know anyone, of course, we don't have any family, no one there we knew. And so that time of just quiet reflection, I would just spend hours and hours out at the beach and in nature every day. The kids, the schools there don't have as many off days. We have so many off days of school for different reasons, and in our school district and in many in the states, but it was pretty solid. There's no half days. And then the holidays were two week breaks, so we could travel, really get out and explore the country, but it was just that time of quiet and not having all the lists. We usually, we rented a house that was maybe a third of the size of where we live, which we were looking forward to. So we just had to eliminate and simplify and just bring what we could fit on the plane and just seeing ourselves as being so adaptable and how our family could just endure and on bravely face a big change like that. We brought it on ourselves, but it was life changing just that time. And I feel like the reflection during those hours, long hours and days just spent with nature was, that's when my art a hundred percent came forward and I became, it was changing for me because I think I worked through a lot of those inner questions that I had about life myself, any of the issues, things that I was struggling with really were able to just have that time to process. And it was a big mindset shift for me As you're describing New Zealand and the travels and the adventures and the beaches and the nature. I can actually see that in your work. I mean, I know your work is very abstract. It's not like there are pictures of trees specifically, but I mean the colors, the vibrancy, the kind of almost like the imagery. And I love the sense that it's almost like somehow an embodiment of your experience. Oh, I agree. Yeah, I found this. So I was always with my camera walking around with the camera, and I couldn't believe what I was looking at through my lens, through the viewfinder where we were, and just remarkable. But then I found myself back, it is a digital camera. So I was now at the computer and I really was thinking, don't want to be sitting at the computer. I want to do something with my hands. And I love when my photographs a lot, I use a lot of layering, and they're often abstract and painterly. So I thought, well, maybe actually painting might be the next step. But what I did was I started, started using cyanotype, and I learned from Megan Ripoff, she's done incredible work, so I credit her to this process, but solar signatures of the body of work where I coat watercolor paper with the cyanotype, this photographic emulsion that's light sensitive. And so you're kind of in a dark space and you cover the paper, and then I would put them in a cooler and take them out to the beach. And as soon as the sun hits there, if you put your hand over the paper and it would create the shadow where the shadow would be would stay, and the rest around it would turn blue, right? So I wasn't doing that. I wasn't putting my hand over it. I was letting the water wash over it in the sand. And because the sun is so strong there, you would get an instant impression on the paper of that wave. So it was a real mark of time, and I was capturing nature in a way that I couldn't possibly do. I mean, this was live a real, to me, it felt like a living thing that I was capturing. And also they change over time. The colors on these cyanotype kind of with humidity and moisture and things, their colors evolve. So through making these cyanotypes, the solar signatures, I think I realized where that's why the next step happened. Because for me, those are about embracing ourselves just as we are all of our imperfections and without edit. So I think that really launched me toward buying a paintbrush and some paint. And so we lived in another house for three months. We lived in three different places while we were in New Zealand, and we lived in the south island at the top of the south island and somewhere called Ruby Bay, and that's where I bought the paint. I had access to more like an art store, and so I could buy all this. I would just be in the garage of the place we rented or outside painting, and it just kept going. And then I painted the beach and I would be in the back of the hatch of the car just painting wherever I could be with this view and getting a little braver and a little braver. But I think in the beginning, some of it was more, I wasn't trying to necessarily paint realistically, but I didn't even know where I wanted to start with painting. And it really changed after we moved back actually in New Zealand, I started adding paint into the Sano type. And then we came back and probably the first year I was just painting from memory of what we saw and did and just the emotions, but they were definitely more landscape oriented. And then I just bought a sheet of raw canvas maybe a year ago actually, and just went for it. I just started pouring paint and just getting, I was finding myself getting into this flow that I hadn't experienced before that was just really, really free. And it was really because this canvas was so large and I was on the floor working. I wasn't standing at an easel. It wasn't this perfect already pre-stretch canvas. And those I was getting really free with as well, but this large scale, and then just me hovering over this painting made a big difference. And then I will tack 'em up to the wall and kind of do some more work to them that kind of needs that surface and a different orientation. But yeah, I find myself a lot of things coming forward and it's a lot of not thinking about, I'm going to make, I don't know, I think you said a tree, but it might resemble a tree. It might have a shape of a leaf or some things come forward in the work that are more organic shapes that emotion and just that freedom that feels so meditative that I haven't been able to find in other mediums. And so I even brought it, we made this interview into a family trip. We brought our surfboards, we learned to surf in New Zealand, and so we're going to do that here in Maine, which we're so excited about. And I rolled up some canvases that I started. Now I start them with cyanotype. So cyanotype has just become my, I started with photography. It's a photographic process. It's something that's where I know I found freedom and some self-acceptance through that process. And so I rolled up these canvases and I brought them, and I'm going to be working on them here. I brought paint and buckets and yeah, where are you going to surf? We are usually in wells surfing. But yeah, it's kind of all the, I think it's very similar, but yeah, that's where we'll be. One thing I'm really struck by is your ability to trust yourself. That it started when you were in school and you were like, this, I'm not sure, not sure, but I'm going to take this class and I'm going to trust myself that this feels right and I'm going to go in this direction. And then doing your social work and then getting to the place where you made a decision, oh, I'm going to stay in with my kids now. This is the thing that I'm going to trust that I want to do this. I'm going to trust that when I go to New Zealand, that's going to be the right thing. I'm going to trust that when I'm processing through things and my art is progressing, that that is the right thing. And I think that for people who work with other people, sometimes it's easy to get kind of pulled into their energy and just let other people's expectations kind of pull us in directions because we can get, as you said early on, you were given a lot of credit for, oh, you're really good at taking care of children, which is a great gift, and it is wonderful to reward people for that. But the caregiving that you can be good at, you're right. That's very external to self. And I love that you've been able to come back and say, I want to reflect internally now, and I want to create this art, and I want this to be the next thing that I am going to be focusing on. Which is amazing because I think it's so easy to continue to stay focused on things that other people value about us. Oh, totally. Absolutely. I agree with you a hundred percent. And so by the way, yeah, over a year ago now, I did return to social work and I am doing therapy once one or two days a week because it is just part of who I am. I think it's that trusting your instincts. And so in therapy, in social work and in a lot of aspects of my life, I have kind of just trusted that I can do something. I don't know what the outcome's going to be. I can switch. I can switch course. And I think that a lot of it too, working in the hospital, you don't know. I mean, every day is different. And inpatient, you might see somebody for more than one day. Maybe they're there for an extended stay, but really you just have a name and some information in a chart and you are walking into their room and you introduce yourself and you just instinctually have to kind of know these are the resources. And I think that's what I loved. I loved this sort of, let's see what this person needs. Where are they at in life? What seems most highest priority for them? And those instincts, I think over the years have been why returning to therapy has been really good for me as well, because I missed having that moment in therapy. What are they going to bring today? And being able to just tap into all the tools, all the experience for what this person needs. And now I think that's coming through in art, but it's really what are the instincts I'm responding to in the studio? And also how do I get myself into that place where I can cultivate that, the flow that I'm looking for, that mindset. And there's a lot that it doesn't just happen. I don't just walk in there and clock in and the marks start happening and nothing's premeditated, right? So trust is big. It's big to know. And sometimes it's hard, sometimes I don't, sometimes you can feel stuck. You may not know what you're going to, I feel like I have to have a certain level of confidence to take this giant canvas and what are you going to do? Even though it's not that perfectly stretched one or it's still this large, and it's the large pieces that have made me come open up more than anything because I mean, they're bigger than me though. I feel like I can walking into this world. And so the way that I approach it is similar to a lot of things. I feel like I just kind of headfirst a lot of things in life, and then I figure out, okay, this is where I need to back off, or this is where I need to make an adjustment, but there's no judgment. So to be able to cultivate judgment free mindset is important to know just in social work, it's a judgment free mindset I'm going in with, and I can give that to myself. I can allow myself that as well. I can accept all those parts and pieces, and it's my favorite when I think of music is big for me. So listening to music while I'm creating, if I have sounds of the beach and I'm at a beach and I'm in an outdoor location, it's just me and those sounds. But in my studio, music is big, and it's always when the voice cracks that gets me, that really just feels like that's where I get connected to that song or that artist. And you travel into those moments. You feel like you can relate to kind of the emotion, even though that's not your story, you don't know. It doesn't matter. So I hope that's what my art can do is those parts and pieces in my art that are the unplanned. And I wouldn't say any of it's a mistake, but maybe the parts, because there's a piece that I made Jasmine crush recently that I started out with a cyanotype, and as I was making it, I coincidentally actually made a tree in my mind and it could resemble a tree. And so that was the start of it. It just was this big tall tree and then another branch kind of coming from the other top section. And then I thought, oh, well, now what do I do? There's some kind of recognizable shapes and forms here, and it's not my usual start to things. And so it kind of was a puzzle. This one, there was a little more of the mind in the work than usual, and there was a section that I kind of changed my mind about a little bit, and I covered it with this beautiful color, but I kept kind of looking at this part. I can still see through to the other part, the layer underneath, and now it's my favorite part of the whole painting. And there's nothing, I mean, it's kind of rectangular, and you may not even think about it if you're looking at it as a whole, but it's my favorite part. And I think that's just how I look at things in life. I mean, those are the best parts. The best parts are those adventures, the journeys, the fact that you may have fallen down, but you got back up and you have maybe some residual evidence As you're talking. I'm thinking about, I don't do a lot of knitting, but I do a little bit of knitting probably because my mother and my grandmother at one point, my grandmother in particular was a big knitter, and I definitely drop stitches all the time. I am not a perfect knitter. And I also have come to really love that the piece that I'm creating. I'll look back and I'll think about the things I was doing during the time that I was knitting three or four stitches or whatever, at the place where I dropped that stitch and what was happening in my life at that time. So as you're describing your art and your thinking about, oh, there's the tree branch that's there, it feels really interesting to me because again, it kind of touches with the living aspect of self. I think that exists. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot to say about what do we show the world? What do we try to hide? Vulnerability is a big topic that I explore in my work, and it's probably the topic I explore in my work. And I think mean, my work is always about vulnerability, and this the thought about time, I'm always, it's just going by too fat. My girls are growing so quickly and I'm turning 50 this year. It's like my amazing parents are getting older. It's things are just going by fast and it's vulnerable and we're emotional, and I think it's so important to show the world. It is nice to know you're not alone. And so, yeah, my work, I really want it to be accessible in that way, and I hope people can kind of get that part that sometimes when we think this is going to be in my work, this is going to be really abstract and it's going to have this feeling. I mean, I never, ever can have box myself in to what I'm going to create. Anytime that I've ever said, I want this work to be in these tones, in these colors, or these have this energy, it's just whatever it is, it's just whatever came forward and I have no idea. I really feel like I don't control that. And it's a beautiful thing. And this idea of authenticity and knowing ourselves, and I think that's a hard thing to narrow down because it's changing so much, so often, and most of the time the things that once the work is done, I stand back. I think to myself, I don't know where that came from. I mean, I know it's me. I know it's a reflection of me and all my experiences, but I could never have predicted that was what would come forward. And that's so powerful. Also for you in this, I don't want to say alternate, this simultaneous role that you do in therapy. I mean that ability to bring your vulnerable self forward. Obviously it's in a different way than you do as an artist, but the ability to model that for the people, even if you say nothing about yourself or your art, which is typically what happens, I would imagine. But there is a sense that this is what you believe, and if people are sitting with you in that space, that's so powerful because I don't think that's something that is intuitive to many people. It's funny, I do virtual work of my husband's job. Someone has to be, and he bikes to from all year long. So we have the one car anyway. I have to be home in case the girls need something. And it's great because as soon as before and after work, I'm right there in my studio. So I have a big painting always tacked up in my studio that's in progress or hasn't been stretched yet. So it's behind me and I'm not mentioning my work and I'm not talking about myself, and it's a hundred percent about them. It's beautiful. It's exactly what I want to be doing. But I do feel like I am learning as I hope as much as my clients are gathering and learning from these sessions. But yeah, I think that is the model, and I feel that maybe even having this kind of thing sitting behind me, it's sort of speaking in a way. And I know for me, this having its presence and I'm in my studio when I am doing these sessions. Yeah, it's an interesting, because there's so much emotional inner workings and deep reflection happening in this space all the time. And my girls love to laugh at, we can hear you singing up there when I'm making the paintings. We can hear you. We know. So I got the headphones on and I am at work and I'm, it's just blissful. It's blissful to just be able to be free like that. And I would love to be able to teach that and model that in the world of art and outside of art making, I mean every decision, everything in life, instincts, that's creative. How you're going to spend your morning, how you're going to start your day, how you're going to set yourself up for some important meeting, what are you going to do to get ready for that? It's creative to think, and you have to pay attention to those patterns, and it certainly isn't perfect for me, even though I know, I know if I don't go exercise and get out in nature and do these certain things first thing, my day is not going to be the same. But some days we all have those voices that sleep longer or sometimes you just need that. But yeah, I think it's prioritizing yourself is important. Well, it's really been a pleasure to spend time with you today. Thank you. I've enjoyed hearing about your journey. Thank you for giving me this opportunity. And I want to reflect back to you something that I don't always do, but the sense of joy that I get from you and the fact that you're so fully embodying all these aspects of self and the time that you took to get to that place. I feel that from you in such a big way and having seen your art, I feel like that also there's that sense of just this life that you bring forward. So I really appreciate you doing that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I've been speaking with artist Mary Lynn Burke, and you can also appreciate the joy of her work through the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. And I hope you'll come to one of our openings and meet her. She's a delightful individual. Maybe she'll bring her daughters and her husband back again, as I know she brought them last night to our opening. It's really wonderful to be able to explore creativity and the human spirit with wonderful humans like artist Mary Lynn Burke here on Radio Maine. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.