Hard work and commitment have paid off for State College area artist Marisa Eichman. Two and a half years after her first experience with oil painting, she has won awards at four Art Alliance of Central Pennsylvania shows.
Eichman’s first solo exhibit, “The World Is a Myth,” opened Nov. 6 at the State Theatre. Her evocative, realistic portraits are painted using Old Masters techniques. Each painting tells a story.
Until the spring of 2013, Eichman dabbled in art as a hobby, and worked in a variety of media, including watercolor, pen and ink, charcoal and graphite. Mostly self-taught, she also took some classes offered by local artists.
“I’ve always been interested in art,” Eichman said. “I realized that if I wanted to get good at it, I needed to narrow down my focus. I chose oil painting, but didn’t know if it would capture my interest.”
To find out, she took an oil portrait painting workshop taught by local artist David Charriere.
“I fell in love with it,” Eichman said. “Every weekend I set up my easel and painted all weekend. David’s class gave me the foundations from which to move forward.
“I study paintings to guess what techniques they used, and try to reproduce them. I’m obsessed with the quality of light in Old Masters paintings.”
She includes chiaroscuro in her paintings — the dramatic, 3-D lighting employed by artists such as Rembrandt, da Vinci and Caravaggio.
For deep, luminous effects, she applies many layers of thin, translucent paint. Other areas require opaque, thick paint. Each layer can take a week to dry. She completes a large painting in two months.
Eichman labels her style of painting as Magical Realism, which she describes as “a movement in literature, film and visual arts that offers realistic settings with fantastical and mysterious elements.”
“I paint archetypes, the big stories and myths that we all have in common as part of our shared humanity,” explained Eichman. “Examples of archetypes include the warrior, healer, wise woman, adventurer and mother.”
Many of her paintings deal with wisdom. Eichman painted the two mythic Bacchante portraits as symbols of women’s wisdom, power and mysteries. “The Price of Wisdom” is a portrait of a man who symbolizes Woden, the Nordic god who gave up his eye in the pursuit of wisdom. The tree behind him and the fish splashing in front of him are additional elements of the myth. “The Sound Man” is the portrait of a wise friend.
“I feel it is important to have a balance of male and female,” Eichman said. “If you strengthen one, you strengthen the other.”
The image of “Pearl Catcher” is inspired by female pearl divers in medieval times, and by a parable of Jesus, “The Pearl of Great Price.” In the parable, heaven is compared to a man who, upon finding a pearl of great price in a field, sells all he owns so he can buy the field and possess the pearl.
In the painting, the submerged diver holds a pearl between her lips. Her hand grasps a tentacle of the octopus swimming behind her, giving the painting a sense of mystery. The poem Eichman wrote about this painting is included in the exhibit.
Eichman earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, with a minor in psychology, from Penn State University. Painting has provided her with a way to express her interests in philosophy, folklore, religion, psychology, mythology and how humans create meaning.
“My paintings are meant to be meaning generators, and to be mysterious, because we and the world are mysterious,” she said. “There is beauty in that mystery.”
Eichman will start taking commissions in January 2016, and hopes to teach painting in the future. She will participate in an upcoming Art Alliance exhibit, Pro Femina, which opens Friday, Dec. 4. Her next solo exhibit is scheduled a year from now at the Bellefonte Art Museum.
For more information, visit www.marisaeichman.com.
