The picture above is me and Brigid Marlin in her studio in Berkhamsted, UK.

I went to London this passed August to mentor with Brigid Marlin, an amazing visionary artist that I shared a deep resonance with. She was teaching me the mische technique, which Ernst Fuchs, the artist who resurrected it first, taught her. The mische technique was originally a Dutch technique if I?m not mistaken. It was brought into Italy by covert measures and that?s how it spread. The way you tell that is had been used on a painting in a museum is when you see ?oil and egg tempera? on the materials list. It is truly something else that has no equal. You know all those paintings we love from the Dutch and Rennaissance Masters? Yeah, most of them are with the technique.

The technique itself, if I?m only talking about the very basic didactics of it, is relatively simple. The tendency perhaps is to overestimate exactly how simple it is because it seems so straightforward, but until you actually dive into doing it, you can?t fully appreciate the hidden complexity in the method. I found it especially frustrating for several reasons. Let me preface this by saying that the drawing/painting I?ve done has primarily been from my head, meaning that I don?t spend my time on still lives or portraits, ever. I use references for my work, of course, but I shy away from the things I?m not very good at, basically most anything other than animals. This has been a weakness I?ve been meaning to amend, but I had not had time to really do it justice. The mische technique laid this weakness bare and visible for all to see. Bad news for my ego.

But good news for overall development for sure. I spoke extensively with Brigid about my inadequacy of being able to draw/paint anything I saw with my eyes and it boiled down to mastering the art of ?seeing.? This may sound ridiculous, but there is more to that than meets the eye (bad pun). I found that my brain fills in a lot of things as an image travels from my eyes down to my hands. Cutting out the middle man, as it were, is very difficult and I am still working on it right now. I was told I was not allowed to start my own work until I was able to do this, draw from life and paint in the technique from life well. that is a fairly daunting task really, especially since I have countless ideas for my own work popping up in my mind all the time, yet I have to temper them and focus on training my eyes to see. That means not only when I sit down and draw something, but all the time, so I am constantly trying to see things the way they are (and if you know anything about postmodern philosophy or Eastern philosophy this is quite a task).

So there it is. My journey into the mische technique. I credit Brigid for seeing that I had potential in my work and for recognizing that I needed instruction. Lord knows that I do. I had to figure most of what I know about painting out myself, despite that I went to a fancy art school and have been drawing all my life. Somehow no one really ever sat down with me, though I asked, and said, this is how you do it because this is how it?s been done for hundreds of years. In some respects, many modern art schools shy away from a method that has been perfected for countless generations and prefer the freer approach that nurtures concept rather than technique. What I have discovered is that you can have all the concepts you want, but if you have no idea what you?re doing technically, you don?t have the tools to convey that concept effectively. Perhaps I slid through the cracks in many ways, but in retrospect, the amazing cosmic serendipity that connected me with Brigid was well worth all my years of bitching and frusteration!