Liz Prescott's Art World: Creating, Teaching and Community

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine today. I have with me in the studio artist Liz Prescott. Nice to have you here today.

Liz Prescott: Yes, thank you, Lisa. Happy to be here.

Lisa Belisle: I understand that you and I are essentially neighbors. You live in Freeport, we're obviously here in Yarmouth, and you've been in Freeport for quite a while now.

Liz Prescott: Yes, since 1995. And I absolutely love it. I love the proximity to Portland and all the culture, and I love going into the mountains easily and biking, running right out my door.

Lisa Belisle: It is a lovely spot out there.

Liz Prescott: And it's a beautiful community, the Freeport community. As soon as I had children, I realized just how close it was. Before children, my kids are now 15 and 19, I was oriented more to Portland. I had a store in the Old Port, I went to Maine College of Art, and I worked out there. As soon as I had children, it just opened up. We immediately started meeting more people and it's just a beautiful place. I don't want to leave.

Lisa Belisle: Well, Liz, tell me about our shared Vermont connection. You can't tell me about my side of it, but you can tell me about your side of it. How did you end up coming from Vermont to Maine? I know you have a Rhode Island connection. You've been in Portsmouth. You seem like you've been out to Colorado, but you've definitely got New England covered.

Liz Prescott: Yeah, I lived in every state in New England except Connecticut. And then my son went to school to finish up high school at South Kent. So I feel like I've covered all the states. I was born in Providence. My parents went to Rhode Island School of Design, and then they didn't stay together, so I divided my time between Worcester, Massachusetts and Woodstock, Vermont, where my mother was. Although I was in Worcester through ninth grade, I was always in love with Vermont. It was where I wanted to be. I spent my summers there and learned to ski, and then I went on to live there for a bit in high school. I graduated in Massachusetts, but went to University of Vermont. So I kept cycling around. We still have close family friends in Vermont, so I'm up there regularly in the Middlebury area and Burlington. It's always in my heart. So Northern New England is really where I love to be.

Lisa Belisle: And I went to the University of Vermont for medical school. And I was actually born in Burlington.

Liz Prescott: Oh, you were? Excellent medical school. And great liberal arts school.

Lisa Belisle: Absolutely. And you did your master's degree also in Vermont, but not University of Vermont.

Liz Prescott: Yes, right. So I graduated from UVM and went out West and came to Portsmouth. My boyfriend had connections around there, fell in love with Portsmouth, lived there for seven years. I went to Maine College of Art when I moved up to Portland and then got a low-residency master's from Vermont College, which was wonderful. So I'd go to Montpelier and do intensive 10-day intensives and then come back and work locally with a mentor. One was a professor at Wellesley in the printmaking department. She was wonderful. And some local artists. It was a fantastic experience.

Lisa Belisle: I have the sense that the process of being an artist and the creative process, those are very important to you. And it's also passing on the artistic, I don't even want to say education, but experience. You do a lot of this work.

Liz Prescott: Yeah. So I started teaching. One of my friends, Catherine Bickford from ArtScope, encouraged me to start teaching for her way back. My son was a couple of years old and I thought, coming out of my master's, I'm much more of a process-based artist. I'm not a technical, conceptual artist that would teach maybe at the college level, because so many of these programs are very, very conceptual. So I didn't pursue the teaching part. Catherine pulled me in and it was teaching basically people that didn't paint early on in life, but want to learn how to do it, adults. And I just really fell in love with it. It's so reciprocal. Right now I'm teaching online through Winslow Art Center out in Seattle, in the middle of a class right now.

And I just love it. We've all adapted to this online format. We have our feed where they post their work and I respond and everybody can jump in. I learn as much as they are. I'm color mixing, doing things that I need to do for my own work, that jumpstarts me. We all get stuck in patterns in our lives. I'll use the same colors, and teaching, I'm getting out of that and going, maybe I should pick up that ultramarine violet, something like that. I like the connection with people too. It's a lot of time alone painting. I am introverted. I'm an only child, so it was easy for me to be alone for long periods, but it's important to be connected too. I have that need as well. That's one thing that drew me to Portland Art Gallery, the community. I keep hearing that again and again, and I see it at the openings. This is really fun. So the balance of teaching, time alone, and then being with people, that's important to me. Did I answer the question?

Lisa Belisle: Yes, absolutely. There's no wrong answers, really, because it's really about your process and your educational endeavors. As a non-visual artist, when you say words like technical and conceptual, I know people who are watching or listening may actually have a background in art, but because I continue to be an art learner myself, I have a sense technical is sort of, these are the things, these are ways that you do things and these are some of the materials you can use. Is that somewhat right?

Liz Prescott: Yeah. Technical might not have been the right word. It was more conceptual, theoretical work. I find I am more process-based, which can be very technical, but that can be more formal, meaning about the paint itself, how you apply the paint, how the colors come together, the theory and the mixing. Rather than it can be painting anything, I don't start necessarily with the idea that drives the work. So the subject could be just about anything, really. The subject is paint for me, and color, if that helps to answer a little bit. So I'm more traditional in my subject matter. People can recognize the farm field, the water, there's a hint of a boat. That's why you only see hints of boats in my work generally, because I don't want it to be about that boat, the object, the cuter Maine scene.

I'm much more interested, because I just see so much of it, in how the colors come together, the reflection coming off, the feel of the place, more of the emotional experience. I certainly could have gone to college and taught that, as a professor, and aspired to that. I sometimes just get bogged down in the theoretical part of it all and just want to be doing. There's no right or wrong, like you said. Not being an artist, I'm sure thoughts pop up, themes, ideas, and you're like, what is that?

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, for me, what I love about having these conversations is that I'm continuing to build my own vocabulary around this. When you say something is more conceptual, for example, what does that mean as you're doing your own work or as you're teaching?

Liz Prescott: So I'm more process-based.

Lisa Belisle: You are more process-based.

Liz Prescott: Yeah. Less about the ideas driving the work, more about the feeling and the emotion in the paint and the interaction, an intuitive response to the work.

Lisa Belisle: That makes sense. So you're more process-oriented, and people who are more conceptual, that's more,

Liz Prescott: Many just leap right away from painting altogether. You might be environmentally focused and maybe you are collecting elements and residue from the ocean and it's compiled and it gets molded into sculpture of some sort that may not be beautiful in any way. I am a bit driven by beauty. So I'm maybe more traditional in that sense. I still like traditional subjects. I like landscape. I do like a horizon. I think that's meditative. We're all drawn to, often what we come to painting for initially, what draws us in. And I did love the landscape. Earth to sky is what we spend our lives trying to figure out. So that's kind of where I am.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, that makes sense.

Liz Prescott: And living in Maine, obviously, it's all around. So I love to straddle the line between abstraction and representation. That's why I love these water reflections, because I can really be abstract and just let my intuition go and play and explore more than, I get too much in my head if I have a building in there, and that's a good challenge actually. I love architecture in the landscape, but how do you not make it too building-like, too object? Is it often the quality of light hitting a plane that's really what's fantastic? Or maybe the edges can dissolve completely. That's a good challenge. It's certainly the colors and the light, the landscape. I'm about to go out West, you made me think of this, to paint in New Mexico. So very different landscape, different quality of light, vastness of the sky.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I remember talking to Jean Jack, one of our other artists, and she talked a lot about the different light that exists in other parts of the country, and where she has also lived, and how it has impacted her art.

Liz Prescott: It drives us. Several of my teachers from Maine College of Art, Johnny Ross, Glenn Renell, who I just listened to on an art chat at Winslow Art Center last night, which was fantastic. Johnny and Glenn just headed out West, and it was for the light, to New Mexico and Arizona. And Georgia O'Keeffe, who was the artist I was first exposed to by my stepmother. She just really loved Georgia O'Keeffe's simplicity. I would look at the Georgia O'Keeffe paintings. I remember the skull, actually no, it was a hip bone of a cow left in the desert, all bleached out by the sun. And then the sky behind, and the landscape in the distance, and the subtle modeling and shifting. I was just blown away. Now, seeing her as an adult, I value Georgia O'Keeffe's contribution to art and how difficult it was in such a man's world, modernism.

And she had to paint big, and she painted her flowers and then she got criticized for all the sexual content that must be there. So her work is very controlled, but it had a huge influence on me. Then I loved the abstract expressionists. Robert Rauschenberg, my mother coming out of art school really was into Rauschenberg. He was all about collage and throwing elements in and everyday paint and paint from wherever. I love that gestural stroke too. So those worlds kind of come together for me. So I'm excited to go out West and experiment that way too. I'm playing with color and thinking about the big space and light, and seeing what I can do. I won't be working real large, but I can come back and do larger pieces. It can be funny though, because that subject matter can feel out of place here in Maine. It's a very different quality of light and color palette here.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, it's true. Having been at the Portland Art Gallery, some people's pieces are very Maine-focused and other people's are not as Maine-focused. And it is interesting to see how they sometimes go together and sometimes seem like they go together a little bit less.

Liz Prescott: Yeah. And that's wonderful. I really have been more of a Maine painter recently because of my scenes. I've loved the working waterfront and boats and docks, but really just as avenues, as vehicles, into playing with paint and line and form. So we'll see what happens when I go out West. This is kind of brewing around in my head, what am I going to take from it? It certainly will be rich and rewarding, and I'm going to be with five other painters, so that'll be wonderful. I'm actually scoping out for workshops to do at Ghost Ranch in upcoming years, because I like to paint plein air workshops and lead them. So I'm curious to see what I'll come up with.

Lisa Belisle: And you have a Monhegan connection?

Liz Prescott: Just started going there. My stepmother and her second husband were married out there and they just fell in love with it. And so therefore I did. They exposed me to it. And how can you not fall in love with Monhegan? So it'll be my 10th season teaching workshops out there this year. I'll be there for two weeks. I rented a house in June as well as the one I always rent in August. The one in June is right in the harbor. I'll offer a two-day workshop and then I'll just be there painting the rest of the time with some other painter friends and family. So I'm very excited. The other one is Schoodic at Acadia, again, through word of mouth, someone saying it's beautiful, you ought to check it out.

It is spectacular. You look across Frenchman's Bay from the Schoodic Peninsula to Mount Desert. So that's been another popular one. I get fed by that, being in nature. I'm not necessarily the best plein air painter. I see them as sketches and studies. I'm really a studio painter. When I say not the best, it's not my real focus, but I just love being outside, and I know how to do it well enough and get people out there and convening with nature. Then we go back to our studios and we see what fodder we have.

Lisa Belisle: When you are with artists and working side by side, what types of things do you get out of the interaction? Do you look at one another's work? Do people make suggestions? How does that work?

Liz Prescott: That's a great question. It's a lot of back and forth. Some people might have more experience than others, and sometimes I'll go into a little more of a teaching mode if they're asking me to do that. We definitely feed off of each other and just be together in the environment. My favorite thing about painting plein air is I don't really care what I come up with, because it often is challenging. You've got winds, you've got heat, you've got bright sun, the light is changing, but you're in the zone, you're in the flow. If all is going well and the bugs aren't, and you're not running into too much trouble with a gale, you are just hearing things around you. It's really wonderful.

You're hearing the water lapping, people walking by, birds, whatever it is. It's really magical. So in terms of interacting with other artists, we're just all being there together, having that experience. And we'll definitely talk technical. Is that working? It's great to do, and we have good laughs. Why don't we try this, try that color, push this? It's a lot about the basics of painting. Value, that's too dark. And colors, it's so bright outside generally that colors will appear lighter. They'll be darker when we get inside. So we need to be careful, we don't paint too dark. So we'll discuss things like that.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't really thought about that before.

Liz Prescott: Yes. And especially if you're working acrylics. Acrylics outside are very difficult. I work with slow-drying acrylics, but acrylics dry darker too. So you come in and your painting just looks dark and dead, and you have to go in and brighten it up.

Lisa Belisle: I know in talking with architects, a lot of attention is paid to the light that comes in through the windows and how it changes a room. I had never really thought about, if you're painting something outside, when you bring it inside, then the light on the inside is not going to make it look the same as on the outside.

Liz Prescott: Right. So we end up having it be darker than we want it inside because we were out in that bright light. And then the light can be changing while you're painting it. That's incredibly difficult. Or I've been painting boats in Monhegan Harbor, and then in comes the fisherman, the lobsterman, and off he goes in his boat. You have to be ready for that. Suddenly your subject is gone.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. I noticed that you do use a lot of reflection and you do a lot of work with water, and of course that's something that you can capture, but it's only going to be that way for some fairly short period of time, I would think.

Liz Prescott: Yeah. I use reference photos as a jumping-off point too. So I'll work on site and then I use those reference photos, and I really veer from them. I can paint it just like I see in that photo, but that's not my goal. I have to be careful of that too, because I need to add whatever is making it unique to me. Water is always changing, but there's so much there and it's so wonderful. Like the docks in Portland down at Custom House Wharf and Harbor Fish, and the reflection off those old buildings into the water is spectacular. I was in the Portland show at Greenhut last year with some of the paintings from there, and there were some of my favorites. I may go back and revisit, and people responded to them, so that was exciting. Always changing and lots of room to play.

Lisa Belisle: Mm-hmm.

Liz Prescott: So I love playing with paint.

Lisa Belisle: Well, that's good to hear, because one of the things that I often hear from artists is that art is work. So I love the idea that it can be work, but also you can be playing while you work, because that's not something that everybody gets to do in their work, is to play.

Liz Prescott: We have to often make a conscious effort to play. I used this quote by Picasso that I happened to find in an art book for my class that starts this Wednesday. He said, I'll not say it verbatim, but that every child is an artist, and the challenge, the goal, is to continue being a child as you continue as an artist. It's so hard to do. We get in our heads, and you have to remember that this is supposed to be fun and play, this doesn't have to be torturous, but you have to do the work. That's the other thing that I tell students and myself. You have to show up each day. You really can't be a Sunday painter and get where you want to go if you're really trying to go somewhere with it.

It's a practice, just like learning a piano, yoga, et cetera. So eking out time for the studio is super important. You have to be careful, even just jumping on the phone for a minute, you get a text or whatever. I have to structure my day and really put that phone away, don't run over and do that email real quick, but make sure that I show up in the studio. Because also, you don't just sit down and make that cutting board or whatever it is. You often have to make a lot of mess and mistakes to get to the beautiful ones. One of my teachers, Glenn Renell, who I just listened to yesterday, I haven't seen him in years, but he was talking about that too. There are many, many failures. So you do a whole bunch in a series and the gems will pop out at you. And then there'll always be some that just aren't good. Picasso had them, everybody, all the painters. You don't realize that, especially when you're starting out. You think every painting should be amazing or you're a failure.

Lisa Belisle: Well, isn't that somewhat the way that we're raised, to think that we all should be immediately perfect?

Liz Prescott: Product-oriented, myself too. That's one of the things I preach in the plein air classes, these are sketches, these are learning, these can be thrown away. We often do them just on paper so they're not precious. We want to come away with something and we want to feel that we're going to be really good. And that's just, it's a winding road.

Lisa Belisle: I remember when I was younger and I took a pottery class, and the cost of the clay was extra. So being that I came from a large family, I didn't want my mom to have to pay for extra clay. So I would sit there and look at this clay, and I was so concerned about my thing not being perfect, that I think I made very, very few items and probably ended up with a big mound of clay leftover, because I didn't want to use up what I didn't think I could make perfect.

Liz Prescott: You were programmed. And you didn't want to waste. That makes total sense. It's the frugal New Englander for sure.

Lisa Belisle: Yes.

Liz Prescott: This is another thing that I preach, and I don't have a problem with, but it took me time, is don't skimp on paint. You cannot skimp on paint. And paint is expensive. Maybe start with less expensive paint, but of course the best paint is much better, a better product generally. You have to. I throw away a lot of paint. I've let that go.

Lisa Belisle: Well, that's good to hear.

Liz Prescott: But coming from a big family, it's very expensive. It makes total sense you would make this very tiny little pot and not waste.

Lisa Belisle: It was probably perfect. Well, I mean, also I remember at the time I had twin sisters who took the class with me, and both of whom were probably a little bit more artistically inclined, or at least in my mind, my young mind at the time. And I'm probably getting into some deep psychology.

Liz Prescott: Oh, I'm sure it's going to be surprising. Competition of family. Let's dig into this.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah, exactly. And they actually ended up getting more clay, because they finished up all their clay. They got more clay. And I was like, but wait, I'm trying. Because I was the oldest, you know.

Liz Prescott: You were the oldest. Well, that explains it. Explains a lot. Absolutely. You had a lot of weight on your shoulders.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. But I think that sort of thing, and that story, is something that I suspect a lot of people struggle with when it comes to creativity, and giving themselves almost permission to do something that is, quote, not necessary. Although being creative, I would argue, is as necessary to us as humans as really anything else.

Liz Prescott: This book that I'm so into, Rick Rubin's The Creative Act: A Way of Being, talks so much about that. That we are all artists, that being human, all our choices are self-expression and creative. And we just have different personalities. We have to allow ourselves to make failures, make mistakes. Painting is definitely psychology and some therapy. As teachers, you dig into that, what's going on in your head. I love it when people are like, this is awful, I hate this. I've found students ripping up their work, and I make sure we have a good laugh about it. It's okay, this is part of the process.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. It's an interesting thing to think about, and what we maybe hand down to our own children without even realizing it, because of some way that we've had this deeply ingrained, and not even necessarily from our parents, but maybe it's just the culture that we live in. Maybe it's the frugal New Englander culture that we come from.

Liz Prescott: Yeah. Definitely. People have trouble putting a lot of paint out, and you need to in order to do well. Whether it's the New England thing, I don't think it's just New England-ish. We know it's expensive, but we have to allow that. So I've been painting now for 25 years, and drawing since I was a kid, and doing watercolor and things. So you learn over time how to loosen up, what you need. I love podcasts that are about creativity, and people in general learning about, especially creatives, how they get work through these challenges. So over time it's gotten better. Now in my fifties, I'm just better to myself. I don't beat up on myself as much, and I trust the process more.

Lisa Belisle: What are some of your biggest learnings, and how have you managed to get to this place?

Liz Prescott: Yeah. I think, well, I've always worked very small, so learning to work bigger. I don't know what that was about me, but it's funny you say, Lisa, like when you were a kid and you were very careful with your sisters. I loved little, little things. I always loved little animal figurines and little boxes. And sure enough, I made little paintings. It's a metaphor for me, just opening up, going bigger has been something I've learned to do. You have more to say. And also where I get into, oh God, I don't like this, and what do I do with this thing, and they start to accumulate, and I do have a fair amount of those. So I've learned that. Another important thing for me, and I do have trouble with it, because I'm a pretty active person, it's hard to sit down, writing, just taking time and journaling and getting out what's in my head, so that I'm a little more open when I go to paint. That's a really good thing. And in general, painting just calms me right down and centers me too. So it's really helpful. So I've learned to allow that.

Lisa Belisle: So it sounds a little bit like the idea of the morning pages, the Julia Cameron approach, where you get things out and then you're able to enter into a space that's a little bit more freed up.

Liz Prescott: Yes. Not just a little, a lot. I do follow her. I came back around because I had listened to a podcast of hers, had her book forever, didn't really follow the daily pages, and then thought, I need to do this again. And again, I come and go, but I'm like, okay, I'm not going to beat myself up on that, that's all right. But in general, what I was just learning, another thing I was reading, listening to actually, is the chiropractor from Yarmouth on 207, just talking about journaling in general, activating different parts of the brain and how good that is for us. Getting into the habitual part of it. And then of course the organization part, and the front, I think the frontal lobe, I don't know, hippocampus back there, being activated, and this is all good. Because I don't want my brain to start slacking off. I'm certainly forgetful now more than I used to be. So another good reason. So I think life is very much a self-expression, and art is self-expression and self-portrait.

Lisa Belisle: You did a series about cairns. And if art is about self-portraiture, then what does that reflect about you?

Liz Prescott: Yeah, well, certainly about, I mean, we could go right to the obvious, finding direction. I could say that I also just love the forms, the way they stacked, and then how they were just a vehicle to play with, how they vary. And I love them against the contrast of the more design-oriented backgrounds, whether it was stripes, or I started into these wild backgrounds against the cairns and the color interaction. But I do love nature. I've always enjoyed cairns. I take pictures of them when I'm out hiking, like at Acadia. I got some great ones with my portrait lens and got all excited, on top of Cadillac. That's a series I probably will revisit too. But I lived in two homes, and, divorce, so my master's thesis was about that, about memory, identity, dislocation, presence and absence. So very much about finding home. So then my whole bird series had topographical lines behind it as well. But again, I love the design, the contrast of the bird, the realism against that abstraction.

Lisa Belisle: When I looked at what you've just described, it's something that is so interesting to me, because it's not obviously what I bring to the cairns, or what I brought to the pieces I was looking at of yours. I've always thought of it as sort of humans talking to each other through these ancient things, these stones, and stacking them in a way like, this is the way I have found, maybe this is a way that would be helpful to you as well, these really primal messages that are being left for us along the way.

Liz Prescott: That gave me chills when you said that. I love that too. Absolutely. I think on some level I'm drawn to them for that reason too. It is amazing. Here's this message left by somebody else, go this way, this is the path. Often we veer off it. And then the beauty of the old, the earth, the rock, and what we've used to help guide ourselves. That's fun. It's interesting to hear different interpretations.

Lisa Belisle: Well, doesn't it also make you think of, is it Bubble Rock, the one that's in Acadia that kind of sits by itself on the top of the mountain?

Liz Prescott: There's the Bubbles.

Lisa Belisle: The Bubbles? Well, there's a rock that just sits by itself. It's a big round rock and it sits at the top of a hiking path. And it looks as if some giant just came along and said, I'm going to put this here. And I love that idea too, that there's this large force, and of course it's glaciers, not likely giants.

Liz Prescott: Glacial erratic.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. And then here it is. And it looks like it's so temporary, but it's been there for a very, very long time.

Liz Prescott: Yes.

Lisa Belisle: So that kind of interesting contrast between sort of uncertainty and solidity.

Liz Prescott: Yeah. It's great. Will you write my artist statement when I do my next cairn series?

Lisa Belisle: Hey, I feel like you've got a pretty good sense of your own.

Liz Prescott: I could probably do it. But I do often come from an internal place, coming back around to when you first asked me about the cairns. It is about finding direction, finding my place, finding my grounding, my home.

Lisa Belisle: Well, and that's why, when I think about even my sisters with their clay, the fact that they were like, oh, I like this clay so much and I'm so confident in my own abilities, I'm just going to keep making stuff like that, that's more clay for myself. There's something about that that I also, even at the time, was like, I wish I had that connection. I wish I had that ability to then be willing to make the pinch pots the way that they were doing it. I've always found that really appealing. And honestly, with my twin sisters, their amazing sense of confidence, and I think the fact that they themselves were twins and that energy, kind of just propelled them forward in a way.

Liz Prescott: Yeah. And you being first-born, that is such a classic thing. You feel the responsibility, you're supposed to do it right. You're thinking, these are expensive, you're thinking about all that. They're not thinking about any of that. They don't have that over them. I think it'd be great if you did some pottery now.

Lisa Belisle: I feel like I've got to come back to it. It's time.

Liz Prescott: Yes. And that's so good. It's so tactile and fluid, and just use as much as you need.

Lisa Belisle: Yes. Well, clearly I've got some art to be doing. And I really appreciate your taking the time to talk with me today. I hope that I will get to see you on an upcoming Portland Art Gallery opening, perhaps.

Liz Prescott: I love going to them and I will be there.

Lisa Belisle: Very good.

Liz Prescott: Thank you so much, Lisa.

Lisa Belisle: Yeah. Thank you. I'm Lisa Belisle and I have been speaking today with artist Liz Prescott. You can find her work at the Portland Art Gallery. You have been listening to or watching Radio Maine.