Student Success Story: Miriam Garcia

classes exhibit student success! Jul 22, 2024

I am so proud of Miriam Garcia! She is just about to open her first solo art exhibition in Portland, OR!

Miriam has painted for over 30 years, but as a working single mom, she never had a lot of time for it. As Miriam says, "I just tried to keep the flame alive. I knew my time would come." Miriam's time HAS come and I'm glad to help her usher it in!

Miriam and I started working together toward the end of the COVID pandemic. In 2022, she took a landscape painting class hosted by Pacific Northwest College of Art (now Willamette University). She was an eager and engaged student and I was able to work with her on her plein air painting skills. After that she signed up for my email list where she learned about my online classes, in-person workshops and portfolio reviews.

This past year Miriam was one of the first participants to take The Science and Practice of Color. Knowing she had an opportunity to have a solo show at the Writer's Block gallery, Miriam dove into the online course with zeal. To keep the momentum going, she then signed up to attend an in-person workshop with me in Talent, OR, a five hour drive from her home town. Miriam came prepared, bringing with her lots of questions, paintings she was working on, and still life subjects that inspired her. Miriam had just started to work on paintings for her show and she told me she was terrified she wouldn't have enough work to fill the gallery! Knowing she would need support to reach her goals, she signed up for a series of online zoom coaching with me. We set up several dates to meet to review her work in progress and discuss themes and technical issues. Our previous work gave us a strong foundation and shared vocabulary that helped make our zoom calls really productive and fun.

At first Miriam had two ideas that were promising, but seemed disparate: "moms" and "Portland bridges". She started working on images of mothers, paintings of her mother and the mothers of her friends - all shown living broad lives, not being defined only as mothers. She also produced paintings of Portland bridges, using photo references she took on a boat trip. The bridges are seen from the vantage point of being on a boat, in the water. Week after week, Miriam added to and refined the moms and the bridges.

During one session we were looking at her body of work and discussing how it went together as a whole. I suggested it was like two shows, and imagined they would be exhibited as two bodies of work - and then Miriam said something fascinating, "They are going to come together. The mothers and the bridges are going to connect." Brilliant!

At this point Miriam's work really started rising and flowing. As she got deeper into the process, she became more comfortable and confident in the imagery and with her mastery of the paint and subjects. Miriam began to paint more intuitively, but we still discussed her organization of value and color for each painting. Even imagined scenes rely on these foundational skills. Miriam says, “I couldn’t have done this without Sarah’s help. Every time I hit a stuck point or got frustrated with a painting, I would bring it to our coaching sessions. Sarah always understood what I was trying to achieve and with just a few simple adjustments, she helped me get there every time. She really got me to the next level as a painter.”

As Miriam continued working, the moms - now archetypically depicted as a women wearing a red dresses appeared on the bridges and in boats under and beyond the bridges. We see the city during golden hour. We feel the freedom and exhilaration of being outdoors, on the water, moving, flowing and leaving.

A few months later, Miriam is now ready for her show. In her new work I find a real sense of a fairy-tale journey, of wonder, of transformation, of growth and transcendence. I don't want to give away the ending! But it involves the red dress being shed and tossed into the waves below, as a woman flies out of the Burnside Bridge Tower, leaving a black dog behind.

If you are in Portland August 1, or on any Thursday in August, don't miss the opening of Miriam Garcia's UnderBridge Portland Bridges As They Aren't at The Writer's Block at 818 NW Flanders Street in Portland.

Check out Miriam's instagram here.

_{Miriam is the (tiny and hard to see) artist under the massive oak tree. 2022, Sauvie Island}