Born to Paint: An Interview with Nancy Mysak
Jeanette: Nancy, what does your painting mean for you?
Nancy: It’s my life! It always has been—all my life, as a child too.
Nancy Mysak, now of Allen, Md., grew up in Denton, where she remembers going into her dad’s workshop and making all kinds of things with wood. When she was in second grade, a neighbor who lived nearby, Nancy Asher, turned her garage into a studio for the town. There young Nancy discovered painting in tempura.
Nancy: I was fascinated!
When Nancy was in middle school, her mom arranged for her to take lessons once a week in St. Michael’s. She continued to paint and paint. While she was studying at Virginia Commonwealth University, her mother encouraged her not to paint for a living, and she recognized that she was probably right, so she transferred to Salisbury (State) University where she graduated with a degree in elementary education.
She taught school during the years when she was raising two daughters — until they graduated from college. And then she turned to painting full-time and has been painting ever since. She and her husband, Paul Mysak, live near Allen where they built a wonderful studio for her in their home.
She especially loved teaching kindergarteners. They made some incredibly beautiful things. One day a little girl she was teaching in kindergarten told her, “Mrs. Mysak, when you grow up someday you should be an artist!” Her reaction was to think, “You are the artists!”
Nancy found watercolor when her younger daughter was a baby, and she fell in love with professional watercolor paint. “It was so much better than oils and acrylics.” She worked with professionals in South Carolina and painted everywhere she went — on the west coast and the east, in Italy and France.
Nancy: It’s really been such a joy in my life!
Jeanette: What is an artist?
Nancy: I think it is a way to speak. I can say things. Painting for me is like speaking — telling my story. For as long as I can remember, I have used whatever materials were available to make drawings, paintings, and sculptures. Some of my early childhood attempts were truly indescribable! The vibrancy of color and the way light affects color as it falls on an object are usually what attract me to a subject. Nature provides an endless array of subject matter as the light and the atmosphere constantly change. When I have an emotional reaction to a subject, I usually make a quick sketch or take a photo of it. Then, in my studio, I work to capture that important image by using watercolor. I had worked for years painting in oils and acrylics and doing printmaking, but when I found watercolor, I fell in love! Journaling my feelings and experiences through my paintings is an essential and joyous part of my life.
I can paint something and an hour later it looks different. I have an emotional reaction. I fell in love with watercolor. It stops time for a moment and I keep what strikes me. I am now working with 40 photos of a subject. The result never ends up like any photo.
Jeanette: Tell me — what are you working on now?
Nancy: Icicles! Icicles on shrubbery that encase the branches and are melting a little.
Jeanette: Why icicles?
Nancy: For the natural beauty of them. Late in the day the light helped me see in shapes the partly melted ice. I love to paint water as ice, oceans, lakes and ponds.
A teacher from Florida, Jane Grastorf, taught Nancy how to work with poured paint. You block the parts that are to be white, pour the paint and let it dry. Then do layers and layers. Pour as much as you want but only one a day, though you can include several colors. This technique emphasizes shapes. It’s a way to avoid getting tied up in details. She does three layers. The drawing gets smaller with each pour and it changes color, such as red over blue making purple. “It’s exciting to see what happens. You never know what it’s going to be. It’s not painting but pouring shapes.”
This painting, “Old Man and the Sea” is one of her favorites that she made with pouring. This is of a man who was rowing in a harbor off the Atlantic Ocean in New England. She masked the boat and poured the water around him.
Nancy: Colors speak volumes. Not all artists like colors. Pouring gives you license to be sloppy and also have control! There’s nothing wrong with sloppy but you need to know when and where to use it.
Jeanette: I find it hard to rewire my head to think “backwards” to paint like this.
Nancy: It is thinking negatively. That is important in life too. So many things are said and the really important things are not said. Having this way of thinking is a “completion of utensils” — things to work with. It’s another way to think differently, that is, about what is not there. The important things are left out a lot of times.
What you don’t say is more important than what you do say sometimes. You give the idea and the person completes it. People react to my paintings differently. You give them the space to find what’s important to them. Everybody has a different story.
You can’t create and paint with anything else there. You have to start working and thinking about what I’m going to do. It’s so different from other stuff — it pushes everything else out. I give credit to Paul and the kids for supporting this habit. My studio — it’s just beautiful!
Nancy: You can view more of my work on my website at http://www.nancyormemysak.com, at the DWS show at the Lewes, Del. Public Library, from Aug. 1-30, 2022, and at the Nassau Vineyards in Lewes during the month of August, 2022.
Her icicles in paint will be there!
Jeanette E. Sherbondy is a retired anthropology professor from Washington College and has lived here since 1986. In retirement she has been active with the Kent County Historical Society and Sumner Hall, one of the organizers of Legacy Day, and helped get highway /historical markers recognizing Henry Highland Garnet. She published an article on her ethnohistorical research of the free Black village, Morgnec.
Common Sense for the Eastern Shore
