HOmey Home

Brittney Monster

Homey Home, acrylic on birch wood panel, 7.5 x 10 inches

Interview by C. VanWinkle
March 23, 2023

Would you please begin by describing the piece that you responded to?

I responded to a two-part piece. The first part looked like origami, and it had a picture of a cat on a couch with a picture frame behind it. I really liked the use of primary colors in there. The other part, the prompt that I mainly homed in on, was the writing. She mentioned home, and all these things about what home is to her, and all the ideas surrounding the word ‘home,’ because really it could be anything that we find ourselves comfortable in. So I went off into a daydream, wondering what home means to me. I was transported to a place with meadows, majestic mountains, sunflowers, and a giant full moon. Nature has always been such a comfort. There is magic in finding life just doing its thing. I feel held in a way that I belong when I witness the rhythm of the Earth. My mind wandered to a quote that sticks with me from a book I'm reading: "The land knows you, even when you are lost". Home is wherever you don't feel lost, and for me, that means outside. Nature is my home. That means wherever I go, I'm home, which is a really comforting feeling.

I especially feel at home in the mountains. We just took a trip up to Colorado and I was reminded about how much like home that feels to me. I don't know if it's the gravitational pull of the mountains, or that it feels like you’re just in it, you're in the earth. That's what prompted me to paint what I painted.

That's a great way to put it! That quote you mentioned is from “Braiding Sweetgrass,” isn’t it?

It is! They have it on Audible. The author reads it herself, so I think the connotations are all intact. It's such a beautiful book about you and the land. I've been really milking it. I've been listening to it on and off over the period of a year. Usually, I finish an audio book in a month, but this one is taking a little bit longer. I'm enjoying the sweet mornings with her reading her book to me and that quote definitely popped out.

Have you lived in different places to experience this idea?

I grew up at the beach, but I couldn't afford the beach anymore, so we moved to Colorado. Then I couldn't afford Colorado anymore, so now we're out in rural New Mexico and it's just a different place every time, all the different surroundings. I felt like an alien at first, but I'm settling in. There are mountains here, and the wind, and all these things come to me and start surrounding me, my heart. It's cool to be able to call nature home if you look at it that way.

Do you think you feel more at home in mountains these days than you do at the beach? Have you changed into a mountain person?

It's everything that surrounds the beach where I grew up; I don't feel at home there. I mean everything that surrounds the immediate beach area. But when I'm on the sand and I'm looking at the water, I feel home. I think it's the spaciousness and the vastness in front of me that makes me feel like there are possibilities. When I'm surrounded by a cityscape or something, it just feels crowded and like I can't breathe. So there's something about the continuous vista that I'm attracted to, that I feel most comfortable in.

That's beautiful. You're good at talking about this.

Thank you!

So how did you get started on your piece?

I have a bunch of panels that have been asking me to paint on them lately, so I pulled out one of those. I've been learning with Amanda Sage on Vision Train and this whole art community that would get together 24 hours a day. You can hop on Zoom and paint with other artists, which has been really incredible for my growth. Anyway, they offer an academy through Vision Train called ViTra, and for the last year I’ve been learning this technique called Mische technique. You basically form different layers of lights and darks, lights and darks, and then you end with a color glaze. This piece is a build-up of many, many layers, and the result kind of looks 3D. I really like this technique. I was practicing this new skill for this piece and I like how it came out. I'm learning Amanda Sage’s version, which is mainly in acrylic, for a quicker painting. She uses oils too, but I'm on the acrylic side because I haven't invested in a whole room for my oil paints yet.

I'm intimidated by oil. It's such a commitment.

It is! And it seems like I'd have to have a whole different hobby area for my oil paints, because this one's already taken up with acrylics.

Just take it outside! Do you ever make art outside?

I actually used to do a lot of that, I used to do live painting at festivals. But since I moved away from California, I've kind of been a hermit in my studio. [laughs] Also, 2020 happened, so there weren't a lot of live events happening that we could go paint at. So I've really been diving inside to figure out what it is I want to do next. Is it worth taking all of my equipment and going to these festivals? I really do miss part of that, but it is a lot of work. So is that something that I want to implement in my career going forward or do I want to paint from home and focus on selling prints online? I don't know yet.

Plein air painting where I live now is a little difficult because we get 25- to 60-mile-an-hour winds almost daily.

Oh wow!

I think anything that I would try to paint would fly away. There are a few places that I've scoped out where I’d love to take my easel and try a little bit of plein air. But not immediately around my area.

Do you often paint on natural materials? I think it works really well here.

I have switched from canvases to birchwood panels. I like the texture and how evenly the paint just slides on. There's been a learning curve, but do I think wood panel is my favorite surface to paint on so far.

How do you like working from a prompt?

I work best from a prompt. I just love rolling around the words in my mouth. I have many, many sketchbooks, a couple dedicated just to words that come to me. We've been doing a daily practice on the Vision Train to see if we can make art every day this whole year. That’s 365 pieces of art! So I've designated the morning time to my daily art practice, before the sun comes up, when I've got my mushroom coffee and nothing has influenced my brain yet. I just listen for a word or a couple words and sometimes it's a scribble that turns into a word. Then, after I'm done writing out the word, I can make a piece of art based on the word from my sketchbook. It's been a really awesome exploration into what drives me, and I just love word magic. That’s really been awesome for me lately.

Do you write too?

I love writing. I've always loved writing. I was always a good student in English and art; everything else I was not so good at. We didn't have a TV when I grew up, so I would eat a book up in like a day or two. I think that contributed to my wordplay a lot. I don't do any serious writing professionally (yet), but right now I'm practicing and keeping up that motivation to stick with the words. It's just been another way to express myself for a very long time. I've always been into poetry and such.

My colleague Lu says we let the prompt choose the artist. We just send whatever prompt is ready to whichever contributor is up next. I’m really glad you got something with so much text in it because you responded so strongly to that. Sounds like this was a really good match!

Absolutely. Both of the prompts together really made it a visual thing for me.

Yeah, even the poem touched on something visual. It talked about the shape of the letter ‘h’ being like a chair. I never look at language that way.

That was really special. I enjoyed that too. I really enjoyed this whole experience. I wasn't sure what to do at first, but I let the prompt sit for 24 hours, and it was so juicy when I came back to it. I like what you guys are doing and I really enjoy that you're including a wide variety of art and creating. You're just seeing where it goes and flows, and that's exciting. I think that it includes a lot of people that otherwise would have been feeling like an outsider. It's really inclusive and creatively juicy. I appreciate it.

Oh good! That’s just what we're hoping for, to rope in some of these people on the fringes or on the outside. Now that you’ve done this, what’s your advice for another newbie who's approaching this project?

Let's see. Just let it all go. If you're worried about anything, just put that to the side. Start with crayons, something familiar. What's the most familiar thing to you? Just scribble something and it'll turn into something really neat, I'm sure. This project is so broad though! It isn’t even just visual artwork, but I'm going through my process. “Just scribble something” is something I would probably say to me, but there are dancers and bakers and so on. Just forget about the outcome, no expectations. Let yourself be creative and let it flow through you. It'll come out and it'll be awesome. It'll click.

It'll click.

Call Number: C94VA | C96VA.moHo

Brittney Potter (AKA Brittney Monster) is a contemporary visual artist whose work tells stories of how she experiences the vibrational world around her. Her original images have opened up conversation about frequencies of the universe, healing through symbols, and mystical interactions with animals. Brittney lives in rural New Mexico with her partner, Regis, who is also a full-time artist.