Alicia Farris: A spontaneous approach to painting

Sometimes your life takes you down paths you never thought possible, in the best way. Born and raised in the Midwest and inspired by the people around her, this month’s featured artist is Alicia Farris. Farris comes from a family of painters and has been painting herself for more than 25 years and teaching students along the way. Her relaxed, warm presence shines through during the Q&A, and her story of an unplanned career in the arts has led her to where she is today.

Q: Tell us about yourself and how you got into painting!

Farris: I live in Missouri, and I’ve been painting for probably 25 years or more. I started teaching maybe 15 or 18 years ago and really enjoyed that. I really like to inspire my students the way that I’ve been inspired by others. They always ask me what my supplies are. I like to try different paints and brushes and papers and we all kind of share together and I’ve been able to recommend some great products to my students.

Q: How did you get into painting and the arts in the first place?

Farris: I always did some sort of art even when I was a kid and always loved to draw and took some art in college. I had never planned on making it a career, so to speak, but had other jobs and raised a family and was able to come back to it. I really have just always loved being creative and painting kind of came in later. I did paint along the way, but I did ceramics and all kinds of stuff. My mom was a painter, and my grandma was a painter. My great grandma was a painter, not by trade, but they just loved to do it. So, I think I have it in my blood.

Q: What inspires your love of watercolor and the work that you do?

Farris: It’s spontaneous. It’s unreliable and unpredictable, and you can get some beautiful effects with watercolor that you really can’t get from any other medium, in my opinion. And it dries fast. It’s easy to travel with, and I really like it. I love painting people. That’s what I teach; a lot is portraiture. I don’t really like to call it portraiture. It’s just that I do faces really colorfully and impressionistically. So, I love to do that, but I also paint animals and landscapes and flowers and whatever. I’ve never met a subject that I didn’t like.

Q: What kind of advice do you give for first-time painters when they’re in your class?

Farris: Relax. They’ll come to my workshops, and they’re so nervous, and they just want to create like the most beautiful painting ever, and they have all these high expectations, and not that they shouldn’t, but I tell people just to relax first and then have fun. We’re all experimenting together, and anything can happen, and that’s what’s so fun about it. And the process is more enjoyable than having this big expectation of what it’s going to become, what it’s going to turn out to be. So, smell the roses along the way kind of thing.

Q: What do you like about working with M. Graham Paints?

Farris: I love the pigment- beautiful pigment, beautiful color, beautiful quality. I love them for studio paints mostly. I have found that in the Midwest we’re humid here so it’s not as much a plein air paint for me, but I’ve tried the oil and the acrylic, and the gouache is wonderful. I travel with the gouache a lot because it stays moist longer, and again, the pigment is wonderful. Yeah, I think my favorite characteristic is the pigment.

Q: What pigments are you particularly drawn to?

Farris: I like the warm and cool of the primaries. I love the quinacridone rose and the pyrrol red and a beautiful manganese blue. I forget if it’s called manganese or peacock, but anyway, it’s a beautiful cool blue, and ultramarine blue is one of my favorites.

Thanks for reading about our inspired artist and teacher, Alicia Farris. To find her work, you can visit her website www.afarris.com and her Instagram @aliciafarrisart