Evolution of an Art Legacy: Meet Maine-Based Encaustic Artist Annie Darling

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine. Today I have with me in the studio artist Annie Darling. Thanks for coming in today.

Annie Darling: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: You actually have the best name, Annie Darling. Has anybody, I've heard that before, I'm going to assume?

Annie Darling: Yes, yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Do you feel like it contributes positively to your life, in a way?

Annie Darling: I suppose it is a positive name, and I have been commented on it or called Darling a lot, so that's kind of nice.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Oh yeah. I guess it's good if you like the person, right?

Annie Darling: Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: If you don't like the person, that's maybe a little bit insulting, but...

Annie Darling: Well, no, I like it either way.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So Annie, how did you come to Maine?

Annie Darling: I grew up near Chicago, and my parents actually are the reason I moved to Maine. While in Chicago, my father was a professional photographer and my mom an interior designer. She worked at the Merchandise Mart, and so we took trips into the city all the time to go to museums and art galleries, and that's where I first fell in love with art. But then my parents wanted to move and we had friends in Maine, so we came to Maine when I was 11. So I've been here a long time.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Where'd you grow up?

Annie Darling: I grew up outside of Chicago in Barrington.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: But when you came to Maine?

Annie Darling: Yeah. South Portland, Cape Elizabeth.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Okay. And where did you go to high school?

Annie Darling: In South Portland.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That is where my mother graduated from high school.

Annie Darling: Oh.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Yes. That's nice. We're keeping it in the family here. Do you feel like your high school experience in any way directed you towards the education you had eventually seek out, in communications?

Annie Darling: No, not really. I took an art class there and I wasn't inspired by it, so it really wasn't until college that I went that direction. I drew all my life. My first drawing was when I went to the Art Institute in Chicago and I came back and I drew these pictures of Jesus on the cross when I was seven. So I must have been inspired by the painting. I've always drawn. That was my big thing, was drawing. So I kind of found it through design in college, for the most part.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That's a very dramatic and specific thing for a seven year old to bring back home and decide they want to do some work on.

Annie Darling: I know. It's kind of funny.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So do you have a sense for what it was that struck you about that particular piece?

Annie Darling: I think it was the contrast and the light. My dad being a photographer, I saw a lot of photography when I was young. When I was in college, I couldn't decide whether I wanted to do design or photography. Those were my two choices in terms of career direction at that point. I was introduced to the concepts of photography really early through my dad. So I think what I saw in my little drawing, I think I saw a lot of contrast and some real feeling in the artwork, and it just must have touched me to come back and draw that. So yeah, it was kind of neat.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So in my family, a lot of the conversation around the table, because my father was in medicine and my mother was a teacher, focused on those professions. Around your table, did you have conversations around photography or design?

Annie Darling: Oh yeah. Constantly. My mom was always talking about her jobs, her projects that she was working on. I would go with her sometimes to help. Same thing with my dad. I would go into his studio in Chicago, which was really fun, because he had M&Ms there. That was one of my favorites back then. So I was around it all the time and they were talking about it a lot. And of course our home was beautiful because my mom was an interior designer, so I just got it intrinsically. My uncle, my father's twin brother, also was a sculptor and taught at Cooper Union in New York. So I spent time in New York with him. I have a printmaker in the family. I have a lot of artists in my family. It's pretty much all artists.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: How did you blend the design part of your life and the communications part of your life? What did that look like for you?

Annie Darling: Well, I bounced around in college because I really couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I wanted to self-design a major, but it was too much paperwork. So I just self-designed a major myself. I started off in industrial technology, and I did that for a couple of years, and architecture and printing was involved in that too. And then, right at the verge of computers, that's how old I am. I did some design classes, some art classes, some communication classes. When I came down to it, I could graduate the easiest doing a communications major, which is what I did. But I loved interpersonal communication, and I like psychology too. That's one of my passions, is psychology. So that all blends together in the art and the design world especially. I went into advertising right after college, and so psychology is huge. It kind of gave me a different perspective on art and the visual language.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Give me an example of that.

Annie Darling: Well, the medium is the message. What we say and how we say it is more important than what we say, whether it's visually or in person, in language. So that really was something that I was drawn to, is how we can influence others. Color theory is a great example in the art world. Color really has a lot of impact. So those are some of the things that I really appreciate and work with every day. I love just the basic principles of design and art, whether it's line, form, movement, color, balance, structure, contrast. I'm really interested in the technical aspects, which is I think why I ended up being a designer, because it was a little more techy. I have a little techy brain in me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I love that you're explaining this to me, because as someone who was not trained in art or design, I continue to learn as I go along. So when somebody says, I have a background in design, for you to be able to say, oh, color theory or line, I think that gives those of us who don't have as much knowledge about it a sense of what it is that this actually means that you are working on.

Annie Darling: Those are the interesting things. I'm teaching a workshop this weekend in Cape. It's a collage workshop. It's very simplistic, but I broke it down into those categories. To understand those, it narrows the field so people aren't so afraid of it. Everyone can relate to line or color, those types of things. So it's breaking it down to the simplest aspects.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Do you think that people are afraid of art, or getting into it?

Annie Darling: I think people are afraid that they're not artists. People are like, oh, I can't draw. I can't do this. I'm not an artist. I used to feel that way when I was young. I was always an abstract illustrator, so I could never draw people. So I was like, well, I can't draw. So I think people have that inherent piece of them that says, I can't do this, or this is scary, or this is too much. But I think everyone can be an artist and is an artist in whatever it is they do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: What I'm fascinated by is that you have in front of you a series of notes that are actually illustrated and designed, about things that were prompting you, what you thought might be helpful to talk about. But I love that even just looking at them, they're very visual. You've drawn a few pictures, and the way that you've drawn your letters. And you talk about, on one of these, the linear and organic aspects of you.

Annie Darling: Yeah. I think one of the problems, I hate to say problems, one of the issues I've come up against in my own art is that I have two styles of art. So I have a geometric style that I've been working on for quite a long time, but I started with a landscape style. I never felt that they went together, although other people would say, I can see you in your art no matter what the art is. But for me it feels like, oh, there's two different personalities. So I wrote down on one of my cards, I am sort of a split personality where I have this linear side, which is thoughtful, design oriented, detailed, perfectionist, discoverer side. And then I have this really organic side, which is emotional and free flowing and passionate and curious and meaningful. So I use different aspects of myself for each style that I have. But it is all me. It just seems diverse, like two roads. But I've brought them together over the years, and brought some of the landscape into the more geometric work. You can see some of the texture of the landscape work in the geometrics, and the landscapes even have some geometry to them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: In looking at your work, because I was at the Portland Art Gallery, I noticed there was a very unique texture to the piece that I was looking at. So talk to me about that.

Annie Darling: It's a pretty involved process that I use. When I was moving from working on the landscape work and going into the geometric work, I was trying to figure out, how do I do this? So what I ended up doing is I work flat, first of all, in my studio, which is why I can't work too big, because it's only as far as I can reach. So I work flat and I actually use a snowboard iron and drip the wax onto the paintings, and then I smooth it out. So on the one that's in the gallery, there's a whole series of layers of just texture. Because I'm dripping and smoothing out the wax with the iron, the wax doesn't stay in one place. The wax kind of does what the wax wants to do. So it's kind of bumpy. It's not even. And then after that I can heat it up a little bit and take a brush and go through it with a brush and create texture, and then use some tools to do some etching into it. So in the piece that you saw, there's wax on the bottom, then there's some textural activity with brushing. And then after that I do an oil stick inside. So what happens is it really picks up the base of the texture. If there's any divots in it, the pigment will stay in there, and then the rest I can wipe clean. So you'll see these black marks almost like etching, which I love, etching. So you have the etched surface. And then what I do is I work with oil and a little bit of sometimes some other mediums, and paint on top. So then I'm making a choice of where I want to put the color and where I don't. And the fun thing is the encaustic medium is kind of a luminous medium, and you can actually rub it up so it has a kind of a shine to it. And then the oil is matte. So I have this relationship between the matte, and this is sort of a design thing, the matte tones next to the brighter tones. So it has all kinds of texture because of all the layering and all of the different mediums that are with it as well, which is what I love.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, that was kind of what I was thinking, that as you're describing working on encaustic pieces, you're bringing in all these different facets of exploring form. It sounds like there has to be a playfulness involved, because you're not necessarily able to say ahead of time, well, I would like to have the wax go here, here and here.

Annie Darling: It's very hard to control. And I don't typically plan my paintings ahead of time. There's a couple of paintings I've actually drawn out and said, let me try this. Some of the larger geometrics are like that. But mostly I sit with the canvas and I just allow it to create itself, and it will. Part of my process really is this communication between me and the work. So I do a layer, I'll make some marks or whatever, and then I'll let that speak to me and then it tells me, okay, I need to balance. And the design education really helps me, because I'll have an element that I just dropped down and then it's that sensibility that tells me what do I need to do next? Do I need to balance it? What do I need to do from a design standpoint? I use that memory of mine to feel it out, and I'm always feeling it out. So I'm doing the next thing and I'm feeling that out, and then I'm feeling the next piece. So one drop, anything that I do informs the next, and that's the discovery for me that I really enjoy, is just allowing it to lead me into a direction. And it does it on its own. They paint themselves sometimes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: How long does it take to create one of these pieces? Because it sounds like a very involved process.

Annie Darling: It can be. Different pieces take their own time. Some pieces that are very simple take a long time. Some pieces that are very complicated take a short time. I call the pieces that take a short time my personal masterpieces, because usually it's typically at the beginning or at the end of doing a series. I do work in series where I'll decide that I'm going to do some geometric pieces or whatever, and they're going to have this style or feel or size, whatever I choose. And usually at the very beginning or the very end, they take a shorter amount of time because I'm free. So at the beginning I'm free to create whatever I want. There's no set thing that I'm trying to go for. And then same thing at the end. Well, I've created a bunch, I don't really need this piece. My mind just goes, and again, I have freedom at the end. So I feel like those works oftentimes are some of my best works because they're created with less of me and more of the work. The work is just driving itself. So I have a really great piece that came together in a really short amount of time and it's one of my most beautiful pieces, and I feel like I didn't create it, it just kind of created itself. So, different times.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: And how does the practice, the experience, how does that weave its way in?

Annie Darling: Oh, it's always learning. I'm always learning. And I like to push the medium. I really like to push the medium. So I'm constantly, every series takes what I did before and just compounds that and goes into more and more and more. So I feel like every single painting is an experience, and then that experience just gets imbued to the next painting. And I feel like my work, maybe unlike other work, I can't even recreate my own pieces. If I try to recreate, somebody might want a commission and say, I want it to be like that painting, and it's impossible. It's because of the wax, because of the medium. So I can get close, I can get the same feel or whatever, but I can never really recreate a painting. So that's kind of enjoyable for me, that every piece is its own creation.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: So it sounds like in your case, the discovery process is really important. And I guess I'm wondering if over time, this experience that you're drawing on has helped you to bring the linear side of you together with the organic side of you in this discovery process.

Annie Darling: Absolutely. And they are morphing one into another. They're becoming more of one, because I'm taking some of the textures I've had in the landscape pieces, and you'll see them showing up in the graphic pieces, where the graphic pieces were a little less textural at the beginning. And then you'll see some of those forms and shapes and some of the textures coming back into the landscape work. So all of the discovery I do is part of the growth process for me. And it's part of what keeps me, that's where my passion is, is discovering something like, oh, I've never done that before. Wow, I've never done that. And that happens almost in every painting, which is surprising, because it's surprising to me that I keep learning and learning and learning. You'd think that I would know what I'm doing by now, but in a way I'm always discovering something new and I love the exploration process. It's a form of play for me to paint. Painting for me is really all about that exploration. It's really all about seeing what can happen and allowing myself to go wherever it takes me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Do you think it is hard for people to allow themselves to play?

Annie Darling: Oh, absolutely. I think, when I think of my classes that I teach, they're always so nervous and I'm like, who wants to play? Who wants to have fun? This is supposed to be fun. People actually come to my little encaustic classes, and people come because they have fun, and then everybody thinks that they're not going to create something great. They all think, oh, my piece is going to be awful. And then they come out and they're like, oh my gosh, this is fantastic. And again, I think teaching that way, it's bringing it back to the basics where I say to people, don't use all the colors, just stick with the warms or stick with the cools. Trying to lead them to success through limitation, which I do in my own artwork a lot of times, limit myself and say, okay, this is going to be monochromatic or dichromatic, or take something away and make it simpler. And that actually can lead to really great discoveries.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: You raise an interesting idea, and that is that sometimes it's what isn't there that makes something seem more cohesive.

Annie Darling: Yes. I think taking away and making it almost like refining it. Like Steve Jobs, he just kept taking away and taking away and taking away, and that's why his products are so beautiful. It's what's not there. You don't need the extras. So I try to work with that too, not having too much. Plus, visual stimulation, for me, I cannot stand a lot of visual stimulation, so I need a really quiet space. So for me, the taking away process is part of what soothes me as a person.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: When I've talked to other artists, sorry Kevin, I will definitely get watered before the next one. When I've talked to other artists, they've suggested sometimes that they are listening to music while they're in the studio, or listening to podcasts while they're in the studio. But you've at least described a quiet visual space. Or do you listen to anything?

Annie Darling: Yes. When I first started painting, I was going through a divorce and I was listening to heavy metal, and you'll see it in my work. The work was black and red and orange and yellow and white, and it was just really dark because I was going through a dark time. And then I would listen to podcasts. But the problem is when I look at a painting that I've done and I listen to a podcast, I'm like, oh, there's Joe Rogan's season, you know, whatever. So now I listen to nothing but upbeat happy songs, because those kind of wash away in my mind and I don't connect a particular song with them. I just connect happiness with it. So I'm very influenced by what I'm listening to. So if you look at the trajectory of my work, you'll see it go from very dark to very light, and from very monochromatic, colorless color, to right now it's like these colors, it's blues and greens and bright. So you can see that trajectory in my life as an artist. Picasso had his periods, the blue period, things like that. I think as artists, we have our periods of time and they're very much, where we are is reflected in our work. My artist's statement, at the end of it, talks about being seen exactly as you are in the moment, good or bad. I feel that as artists, we're really being vulnerable. We're really showing ourselves in our work, whether we want to or not. It shows up. And for me, I feel like it's very inherent in my work. You can see where I am. You can see periods of time where I was struggling, that my work isn't good. I've had periods of time like, wow, that was a really bad time. Look at that work. So you can see where my work really reflects where I am as a person.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That's kind of a big deal, to have that level of vulnerability, to be looking at this dark piece and putting it in front of somebody else and wondering, do they know that I was going through a divorce at that time? Do they know where my mental health was at that time? How do you handle the way that that might make you feel, being vulnerable with putting your art into the world?

Annie Darling: Well, the interesting thing is people relate to it. People will relate to their own lives through that work. So people who like the darker work, there's some reason why they're drawn to it. So I feel like that is part of it. I was looking at one of the other gallery artists' paintings last night at Portland Art Gallery, and it just had this beautiful blue with this contrasting golden color, and it just gave me this really beautiful sense. So I could sense where she was. I've seen her work throughout the year, so I know kind of what she's done and what her work has looked like in the past. And it had some freedom to it and it just had some different qualities. And I actually spoke to her about it, because I could see how she had changed and grown. And I brought that up to her, that for a while her work was in a certain box and then all of a sudden I saw her get out of that box. So as an artist, knowing that that happens, I could see that with her. So I said that to her, that it was really fun to see her growth and acknowledge that for her. So I feel like people relate to it. I can relate to that. I could see that, because I have done that in my work and my life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: When I interviewed Lois Lowry, she's the author of children's books and young adult books and some adult books, I had read up on many of her pieces because she's very prolific, and I remember bringing up to her in the interview, oh, this book, one of the first books that you wrote, and it said this, this, and this. And it was interesting. Her response was almost as if, yes, I appreciate that part of my life, and also it's kind of behind me, and now I'm at, kind of, in my most recent work. It's not that she's discounting the first thing that she wrote, but it's more like she's more fully connected to what she most recently wrote.

Annie Darling: I feel that way too, in that when you look back on your work, like I can see my work all the time, when you look back on your work, you can see growth. And sometimes that growth means, like what I just said, you're looking back on some things that might not be so great. You're looking back at your learning, you're looking back at your growth, in whether it's art or relationships or whatever. You make mistakes, or you don't do things in a way that you wished you could have done them. And then you grow and you actually do that, and then it's really exciting. And I think sometimes looking back on some of the work that you've done, it's not necessarily an experience of shame or whatever, but it's an experience of like, oh, it's kind of cringey sometimes to look back on work that you may have thought was good at one point, because that's where you are at. But now that you're at another level, it's not as good. You don't appreciate it as much as you did in that moment. So it's kind of scary.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Yeah. And I think you've just described all of life, that you look back on your life and say, oh, that's really cringey. I wish I had never done that.

Annie Darling: Right. And in art, you get to do it in public.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Annie, what is it about the upcoming year that excites you? What is it that you are working on right now with your art that is going to continue to evolve and you're going to share with the world?

Annie Darling: Right now in the winter, I usually take at least a month off, because I find with anything, any job you have, when you don't take time off, what happens is everything gets stale. So I usually in the wintertime focus on marketing and focus on other things. And I sit with what's going on. I sit with what happened last year. I sit with these things and then they bubble up and form into something. I never know what the next body of work is. So usually I create a body of work a year. I take off with some sort of idea or curiosity or something I want to discover, and then that ends up blossoming into something. Typically I'm taking from the past. So one example is there's a work called Lonely Worlds, which will be at the gallery soon. So that piece is a piece that I did. It was the only light piece actually that I did after I got divorced. It's a 24 by 48 and it's mostly white with a lot of texture in it, and then these groups of really small dots in three places. And then there's one small black dot, which represented me. And I just felt really far away from everyone. I felt lonely and I felt like everyone else had someone, everybody else in a group, and here I am all alone. So that was my expression of that. And then that was my first geometric piece. I didn't know it at the time, but then my circles got larger, and then my circles got larger, and then my circles got larger. And the pieces that are at the gallery now, the circles are huge. So I took this little circle and then I expanded on the circle once, and I expanded on it twice, and then I expanded on it a third time. So that's kind of what happens to me, is I'm like, what if? And for some reason I'm addicted to circles. I love circles. And the circles also meant community to me. So when we were talking about story, here I went from being this little teeny tiny circle that was all alone, and then I wanted to build community. So you'll see a lot of the work after that with lots of circles. And I found community, oddly enough. As I was searching, I found it. And you can see that obviously my community's huge now, because these circles are huge. So it's a reflection of my life too. But also, it'll be one little aspect that I want to explore. Like I wanted to explore the circle. Or in the landscape work, it could be just really working with the texture. I found out how to do this new texture. Oh, I can do that now. Let me see what I do when I expand that out. So all of the work is based usually on something from the last piece, just like you would take lessons from my relationship and move forward into another one.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, hopefully.

Annie Darling: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Not everybody does.

Annie Darling: True. Some people just...

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Recreate the same work over and over again, in the same relationship over and over again.

Annie Darling: And we were talking earlier about me feeling like my work is kind of dichotomous, if that's the word. And that's something that I worried about, is that I wasn't creating the same thing over and over. I was going over here and then way over here, and then way over here. And being comfortable with it still being my work was difficult, because it felt to me like it was all over the place. But really it was all learning, to get to wherever I'm going.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, I mean, that's okay. And I love the idea that you take time off in a year, because it's like having fallow ground. I think the first radio show I ever did was with an author, Liz Peavey, whose mother had died.

Annie Darling: Oh, love Liz. Love Liz.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Yeah. And her mother had died and she had written a play, and she talks about this idea of fallow ground. She talks about this kind of just letting things rest, because you need to get through the winter, and then in the spring things will come again. And when I talked to Linda Greenlaw, who's another author, she talked about how in the wintertime she writes, and in the summertime she's out on the ocean. So I think what you're describing is so powerful, and giving yourself permission to say this is actually part of the creative process. Taking time away is actually part of the creative process. We do not all need to be a hundred percent moving forward all the time.

Annie Darling: Well, and I work alone, so I'm in a small place by myself a lot. And my being is a tactile being, a sensual being, a being who needs to see and look. So to me, when I take that time, I make sure to go places. I look at other art, very inspired by other art, obviously, since I was a kid. I need to see things. I need to touch things. I need to hear things. So that comes back and is my inspiration. It's not always, you don't always see the inspiration in the work. It just feeds me somehow and allows me to be able to give again. And I love that process. I need that process. I can feel it in my body when I need to go. I'm like, okay, I gotta go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Where are you going next?

Annie Darling: California, to see my son.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Very good. So it's kind of a dual purpose.

Annie Darling: Yes. I'm going to paint a painting for him for his living room. I'm painting a commission for one of his friends. And then I'm seeing some friends from Maine who live in California now. So that's nice.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That's really wonderful. There's like so many things woven into that one trip.

Annie Darling: Yeah. And a friend who I met in the airport, in the airport bathroom, and we became best buds, just meeting in the Boston Airport on the way to LA a couple years ago. So we're going to see each other too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Life is interesting.

Annie Darling: Life is interesting.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: It's all the circles you're talking about.

Annie Darling: All those circles.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, Annie, I very much enjoyed our conversation today.

Annie Darling: Thank you. Thank you for having me. This is wonderful.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Yeah. You're a lot of fun. And I know people are going to enjoy seeing your work. And now I get to, I'm going to go back to the Portland Art Gallery and I'm going to take a look and be like, hmm, wonder what was happening in her life during that time.

Annie Darling: You can ask me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Absolutely. We'll connect those dots.

Annie Darling: Yeah. It's nice too, working in encaustic, because you can touch it. Not in the gallery maybe. You don't allow that. But I encourage people to ask me if they can touch the work, and it's nice to have that tactile experience and for people to really experience the work.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: Well, maybe someday I'll come to your house and you can allow me to touch the work at your house.

Annie Darling: Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: That way we'll draw the line so people aren't going into the gallery just putting their hands up on the wall. That would be a little weird. But still very exciting stuff. And I know you and I have known each other for a while, so it's great to kind of reconnect with you.

Annie Darling: Yes. Thank you so much. This is a great opportunity.

Dr. Lisa Belisle: I've been speaking with artist Annie Darling, and I think after having this conversation, you're going to want to actually go to the Portland Art Gallery and see some of her work and maybe actually connect with her, and maybe she'll let you touch her encaustic pieces. It's an exciting time for Annie Darling. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle. This is Radio Maine. Thank you for watching or listening. Thank you, Annie.

Annie Darling: Thank you.