The revelation came in one frustrated huff of breath.
Stephanie McDairmant had been standing at her easel, dabbing and brushing paint onto the canvas in an attempt to unleash the emotions roiling within her. She had an image in her mind of the design she wanted to paint, but no matter how many times she attempted it, her hands just wouldn’t get it right.
So she threw a tantrum.
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“I kind of had a fit while I was painting because I couldn’t make it work. I had my face up by the painting, and I huffed on it and threw it down and walked away,” she said. “When I came back, the paint had started to do this swirling pattern that I had wanted. So I had to figure out what I’d done to make that. It was because I breathed across the canvas.”
By using her breath, rather than a brush, as her primary way of spreading paint, McDairmant discovered she could create fascinating patterns and texture in her abstract art. Her unusual technique has unleashed a torrent of creativity that has resulted in stunning, vibrant paintings.
McDairmant’s work will be featured in an exhibition throughout October at the Southside Art League gallery. By showcasing how artistry helped her unleash her own emotions, she hopes that others realize the healing power within themselves as well.
“When you feel like you’re at the end of your rope, or you’ve given all you can give, you have something inside of you to share with others to encourage them,” she said. “That is the primary goal of what I’m doing, to spread that message that there’s something about you that’s special and unique, and that’s what the world needs.”
For many artists, the creative spirit and art is something that is cemented at a young age. But McDairmant didn’t try painting until early 2017.
The Wabash resident had worked as a photographer for many years earlier in her life, shooting weddings and kids portraits among other things. But she had never painted.
For the past 15 years, she had focused on raising her children and serving as a caretaker for ailing family members, from her grandparents to her husband’s father.
“That took up most of my time. But as those things tend to do, that season ended, and I didn’t know what to do next. I was looking for a job,” she said.
McDairmant applied for a number of positions in different businesses, but her job search was stalled. Only when a friend, who was an artist herself, suggested that she tap back into her creative side did a path come open.
“I thought that maybe that could help with some therapeutic things, but certainly I wouldn’t make anything that I would show anyone, or that I’d sell,” she said. “My friend said that’s not the point. She said that the point was tapping back into the creative side, and that will help you with a lot of things.”
With a little convincing, McDairmant started painting. She would put her brush to the canvas and see where her imagination and inspiration took her. Slowly, more complex, grand abstract ideas formed in her mind.
These abstract forms were exciting. She swirled her paints in different ways, tried new techniques such as adding water to acrylics to change the flow of the paint, but not worked. None of her attempts resulted in what she pictured — until her frustrated breaths met the canvas.
McDairmant experimented with different breathing techniques, mixing thicknesses of paint and finding out what happened if she painted on humid days, cold days and different weather. The more she used her exhalations to create her work, the happier she became with the finished product.
And it unleashed feelings within her that she didn’t know were lurking.
“I had this huge backlog of emotional grief that I hadn’t dealt with. It just started pouring out of me,” she said. “I painted for six months straight, every single day. It was almost a relief because that was the only time my brain would turn off. It was a relief to have something in my control that was working.”
The outpouring of emotion and creativity eventually waned, and McDairmant felt her life had become more balanced. Taking the lessons of everything that had happened over those six months, she started working more methodically and controlled.
After working exclusively in black-and-white paint so she could see how paint combined in different conditions, she transitioned to more color in her work.
“After I eased out of that, it went to bright, bold colors. It went from relief to just joy, to experiment and see what colors I like to work together,” McDairmant said. “I don’t have any formal training in this, so I’ve been relearning color theory and things like that, all of the aspects to make joy.”
She called her project Canary in a Coalmine Art. The name is a reference to the old mining practice of using caged canaries as a warning system for carbon monoxide and other toxic gases released underground.
Canaries are noted for their sensitivity, and if they died, it would alert miners to get out fast. McDairmant feels that she has a similar sensitivity, only to the hurt that the world can unleash.
“Once I started to wake up, I realized this is a talent that was put inside of me since before I was born,” she said. “What an amazing thing to turn out. And if it turned on in me, it can turn on in other people.”
Just months after she started painting, McDairmant entered her work in the annual Greater Greenwood Arts Council Art Uncorked! competition. Her painting was judged against other artists from around the state, and the winner was chosen to have their artwork on a special bottle of wine from Mallow Run Winery.
McDairmant ended up winning with her painting “The Upsidedown.”
“That was amazing and life-changing, where I realized I could do more with this than I had imagined,” she said.
From winning that competition, McDairmant was invited to be a guest artist at the Southside Art League. The exhibition, titled “The Light,” will feature a variety of her work stemming from her most recent painting sessions, as well as pieces that were part of previous collections dating back to 2017.
“It’s kind of going to be a little bit of everything that I’ve done over the past year and a half,” she said.
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"The Light"
What: An exhibition of abstract paintings by Stephanie McDairmant, a Wabash-based artist who uses her breath to create unique patterns and texture in her work.
When: Through Oct. 27
Where: Southside Art League Off-Broadway Gallery, 299 E. Broadway St., Greenwood
Hours: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday
Admission: Free and open to the public
Reception: A reception for the exhibition will be 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 12 at the gallery.
Information: CanaryArtwork.com and SouthsideArtLeague.org
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