Melissa Leaym-Fernandez is a painter, teacher, activist, consultant, runner, grant writer, and lover of elephants. She has numerous degrees from the University of Michigan; Eastern Michigan University; and the University of Michigan, Flint. She works as a teaching artist in Flint and lives in the Blue Water Area, near Port Huron, Michigan.

Tell us about your evolution as an artist. I have always been excited about the use of color. Yet I recently came to understand why and how I cling to certain colors more clearly. I have always loved the elephant. My biological father (who left my mother and I) is from Sri Lanka. I have always been drawn to the cultural colors of Sri Lanka and Southern India. As an early painter I just became excited about the elephant, as a subject matter. I found several similarities in the life of a herd and my own life. In a herd, the matriarch provides all—she is the leader, she delegates, she provides care. My mother did that for me as a child. In a herd the males come in from the wild to mate and then leave again—the do not engage in the raising, care or protection of the herd. See the similarities? I saw my mother as this strong, bold leader and that was reinforced in the matriarch of a strong herd. I love the texture, the energy, the personalities of elephants. I have researched them all over including the Detroit Zoo, the Woodland Park Zoo I Seattle, WA, African Lion Safari in Ontario, Canada and my favorite experience was while I lived in London, England.

In 1999 I was able to go into the paddock at the London Zoo and play with the three females! Super exciting! I was able to touch them, take photos, learn about their individual personalities, feel the textures of their skin and hair—plus get smelled up one side and down the other! It was a very exciting experience. To top it off, I was invited back anytime I wanted, as the elephants liked me so much (and probably because I was well behaved too!). I painted with a passion, fervor and had a blast.

My work started to change, or my responses to my own work, started to change about 2012—when I came home to a sewage flood that destroyed my studio. I lost about 27 paintings in varying forms of completion. It was horribly demoralizing. I found that people “loved” my work and aesthetic responses remained strong but sales were nonexistent. Businesses wanted my work as “eye candy” to improve the look of their spaces (i.e.: I pay to transport paintings, hang paintings and transport paintings back to the studio paintings but without any compensation). At this time, after the destruction of so much work, and the lack of sales I was really bitter. I would try to work, but to be honest, I felt quite betrayed by art. It seemed like everyone wanted a piece of my creativity for free and this was infuriating as my only goal is to get debt free. I painted infrequently and with anger, dark tones and abstractly.

More recently I have had some moments of clarity regarding my own creative processes and responses to art, my art. Currently, I am working as a Teaching Artist in the Flint Community Schools. Yes, that Flint, the one with the toxic water. I work in the alternative high school teaching the elements of art to kids who have been forgotten, are parents, have no parents, who have seen loved ones die; seen gun violence; been the perpetrator of the violence; can’t say a sentence without using “f—,” “ni—-” or “b—-;” and kids who society has written off, yet a society who still want to complain about teen pregnancy, welfare and the poor and needy in the urban setting. Yep, this is where I spend my days. I am here because I know what it is like to be the child victim of a violent act, poor, and belittle by those in leadership. I can relate. I realized that that I was, and am, angry. I find that that energy is coming out in the new works I have completed—which are a bit darker in color. I am angry that my students are forgotten; I am angry that Rick Snyder feels poisoning a city is acceptable. I am angry that I cannot do anything substantial to help my students other than show up each day and be there. I am angry that my kids believe that the way their lives are today is what they think their lives will be like forever. I realized that the cheery, bold, in-your-face color in my work, that aesthetic that makes the viewer say, “Oh, wow, I love that!” is just my emotional response to the violence in life, past and present. I paint to lifts others too. I know they feel the heaviness, the helplessness, the stress and my work is a moment of emotional release. In that moment, what I do matters and has power.

Your style is so colorful and positive. What is your approach to a new piece? As I start a new piece, I look for shapes that I like. I also look for inspirational images that have an emotional context. I think about possible connections that could be made with text. For instance, if I want to do an image of a mother and calf elephant I would look for photos in my own collections, or elsewhere that inspire. I use that photo to create a base shape and then I let the colors ideas flow. I may lay a lean layer or two to work out color ideas in my head and then I paint it out. I am finding now that I know why I paint, that ideas are starting to really flow again and I love this!

What do you think of art in the Church these days? I think the art in the church is extremely limited but I feel like the leaders, at a very minuscule level, are trying to change that. Not fast enough for my liking though and that change may be from the directors of the museum vs. actual church leaders. As I was in the worldwide competition with a large 5×5’ painting the art that was purchased and won awards was the same old boring stuff, unimaginative, figurative—bleh. I submitted work to be sold (prints) at the BYU Bookstore. I was told, “your work won’t sell, why don’t you do a Noah’s ark image and we will try that.” At Deseret Book for instance (and I do not know if the Church still owns this business) all the work is saturated in browns, figurative and literally from the scriptures. There is so much more to uplifting art. My work celebrates nature—the creation of our world is a big part of the Plan of Salvation yet I have been told “your work really is not part of the market”. Well, lets be leaders and change the market wants! Tell the people what is hot and they will buy it! I don’t find images saturated in deep browns all that uplifting to the spirit. I think clean bold color, strategically placed in a home can inspire, uplift and empower the viewer for a daily dose of happy.

What are you working on next? I just finished a couple of large paintings in response to the toxic, poisoned water in Flint. Last night I started a new painting (2×6’) of running zebras. I like to work bigger, the 3×4’ canvas is my favorite size though I do go much larger. I just finished two 3×6’ canvases of running zebras too. Something about the stripes and the motion, the energy of running and the question the images provoke—are they running to someplace or away from something? I also plan to complete more mother and calf image this summer—all oil on canvas. Also, this summer I will be working on my USA watercolor series—the shape of the state with layers and layers of text inside that describes that state. This work is more tedious and takes more research but I want to complete a painting for each state in the USA and possibly the provinces in Canada, as they are super near me—just across the river! I also have a more trendy series called “Love My Michigan!” I will probably add some new pieces to that collection as well.

Visit Melissa Leaym-Fernandez’s website.

Kazuto Uota is a painter and conceptual artist. Uota studied at Musashino Art School in Tokyo, Japan and now lives in Nagano, Japan.

Tell us how you came to be an artist. I was born at Osaka Japan in 1960. I started painting after I graduated from high school when I was 18 years old. First, I studied the Japanese style of painting as a pupil under a professional painter for about two years. Then, at another school I studied drawing. I joined the church at 19 years old and went on a mission at age 21 for 18 months. After I returned from my mission I studied the Japanese style of painting seriously again at the Musashino Art School in Tokyo, Japan for an additional three years.

How does the gospel influence your art? I joined the church in 1979 and I started studying art and life of the gospel at almost the same time. The gospel is the base and the motif of my artwork. Both the gospel and art lead me to the truth of God. For example, It is a way of expressing of my creating to using nails, I use nails as an icon of sin which I have committed. I have been always hammering a lot of nail(sin) into a body of my Lord, and his body has been injured and broken by my sins. When I act using nails in my creating, I realize my weakness and love of my Lord which he had paid the price to redeem me from my sins.

What are you working on next? Now, I have created works using different ways of expressing myself. For example, by using nails, by knitting hemp clothes and twines, and by burning, etc. The way of expressing of art will be changed, but I am going to create art works based on the gospel all the time from now on.

Visit Kazuto Uota’s website.

Rose Datoc Dall is a talented painter and creative mind. She was born in Washington, D.C. and received a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She raised four children and lives with her husband in Virginia. Dall will be participating in ‘Meet the Artists’ at Deseret Book in downtown Salt Lake City this Saturday, April 2, at noon and again at 5:30 p.m. MDT.

You once wrote, ‘Everyone’s path is different. You have to embrace that with which he blesses you, even if it is not exactly what you expect.’ Explain. I guess I can only speak from my own experience. Therefore this statement applies mostly to my circumstances as a mom and an artist. I cannot say that this path is for everyone, as everyone is in a different stage of life, but this path for me became what it is, shaped by circumstances which I could not fight, and therefore embraced. Maybe some mom artists out there can relate. My point is that life and plans do not always turn out the way you want or expect, but just embrace what comes your way. Well, okay, maybe everyone at some level can relate. Everyone at some point has to make hard choices.

To explain my statement, I graduated with a BFA from the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University with honors and with every hope and intention of being an artist that jet sets to New York. Being a contemporary artist in every worldly sense of the word. And I had NO plans to paint art of a devotional nature. To be honest, I never took current religious art seriously, a lot of it being overly sentimental or just poorly done, and therefore dismissed the genre altogether.

However, every time I tried to divorce my artistic self from my Mormon self, I got conflicted. A man (or woman) cannot follow two masters. When I tried to paint for purely secular reasons, I hit a wall. Zero vision. There was no inspiration. In fact, dismayed at this lack of direction right out of school and a newlywed, I almost gave up painting when my life became full of small children and diapers and kids’ activities and… well, family. I did not realize at the time how the Lord has His own timetable, and that I had to wait for a season to be more fully engaged in art, and to wait for success. Little did I know that years of motherhood, sacrifice, years of activity in the church, my deep religious convictions as a convert, are that which came to inform my art and give it depth. My life is no longer full of diapers, as three of my four children are grown: one married with a baby, one a senior at BYU, one on a mission and the youngest in high school. Where secular purposes for art lost its relevance to me, all of my imagery became spiritual, some pieces more outwardly so than others. They are statements about motherhood, family, children, relationships. Even my paintings of Christ and Adam and Eve come from that same place.

In short, there had to be a choice, a prayerful and conscious choice of consecration. Either go one way, the way of the world (and in my case, go nowhere, even though it was my desire at the time to be out there in the world), or conversely, embrace that place from where the inspiration comes, a spiritual place. I chose the latter and ironically, the art world opened up to me in a way I could have never authored for myself, in addition to having success of which I could have never dreamed up on my own. It was not what I expected, but I chose to embrace that path which Heavenly Father carved out for me. As he barred one way, a window was opened elsewhere, and purely on His timetable. I just had to choose not to fight it.

Visit Rose Datoc Dall’s website.

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