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Interview: Pan Brian PaineAugust 12, 2005
1. How long have you been a resident in Siskiyou County?
About nineteen years. What brought you here?
I think the Mountain. I came here on holiday and by chance came to Mt. Shasta. Somehow I knew immediately when I arrived that I would have to return, and when I decided to live in America (in order to become free of the tightness of being British), it seemed I was guided to stay here.
2. Can you give a short explanation of your specialty or your artistic medium?
When I started painting, which was usually due to depression or frustration, I painted abstracts. I knew little about art, and found realistic drawing very difficult even though I was able to do calligraphy and design. Eventually I went to art school as a mature student and became particularly interested in the human body, mainly because it seemed the most challenging to draw, and I could learn the most by tackling it. I like to try everything including sculpture, pottery, poetry, story writing, cartoons, acting, etc but time is the limiting factor. Our potentials are endless and I don’t like to specialize in one particular thing, although painting is primary. I am always trying to discover more about myself and life and the infinite possibilities that we are, partly through art.
3. How long have you been making art (professionally and unprofessionally)?
I was a graphic designer for many years in England working mainly for publishers doing book design and book-jackets. I painted a little, mainly out of frustration, and wrote and illustrated a few children’s books. Then in 1981 I went to art school in London and that is when I really started painting. Even then I did it just because it felt like it could be a nice hobby.
4. Is art your full time career?
Sort of half and half. I have always had to do other things as well. I would like it to be my full time career, but I’m not good at self-promotion or marketing.
5. What else do you do as a profession?
I did graphic design and taught a little. For a time I had an antique business and restored some old houses including a sixteenth century thatched farmhouse with barns, and a flint farmhouse and barns near the sea under which we discovered Roman foundations. I lived in Norway for a while and free-lanced there with graphics. When I came to the United States, I sought to only do art because I was tired of design, but it didn’t quite turn out that way. I was co-director of a kachelofen business (beautiful ecologically sound masonry, tiled stoves), and with help built the house I now live in.
6. How have you learned your art? Have you had any formal art education?
Yes. I went to the Byam Shaw School of Art in London for three years which gave me a B.A. in fine arts I studied mainly painting while I was there.
7. Have you had any special mentors that have influenced you and your style?
I think Picasso and Matisse. Apart from the greats, not anybody that I have known. I was appalled at school that the teachers, who were all practicing artists, tried to teach students either to paint the way they did or to paint like the latest fashionable discovery, instead of encouraging the student to draw out his own individual talent.
8. Can you talk a little about your experience as an artist in Siskiyou County? (In other words, what is unique about being an artist in this area?) (Pros and Cons) (economic, cultural, physical/geographic)
I find it difficult to know whether the place makes any difference. In London I painted more or less the same way I do here. Except that I sometimes paint the Mountain. Most of my life I have lived in nature, and can't really say that the place or the people make very much difference. I guess I am a loner in many ways. I don't think I get affected much by outside influences.
9. What do you draw inspiration from?
It is more on a spiritual level. Exploring our potential. Trying to picture a sort of healing and wholeness. I think Picasso said that in fifty years time paintings would be healing artifacts. I think innocence and freedom. I am very interested in the aboriginal cultures and how they lived because they were so much closer to nature and spirit than we are now. My main motivation is to inspire total freedom, total innocence, love and truth. Going deep and getting to the core of who or what we truly are - which is everything!
10. If you had to describe your style in a few words how would you do this?
Well, color is a great motivation. Color inspires me. The beauty of the human form which I feel is not acknowledged, especially in America. I react against the taboo of nakedness. Is the Divine ashamed of her creations? Maybe “color-expressionism”, but any label is bound to be limited. The paintings express themselves.
11. What is it about making art and the creative process that you find most interesting or are most passionate about?
With art one can become totally free and express oneself as far as possible, as far as one can in the most radical way. In life, that is more difficult to do because of our conditioning and the insane thought processes of today’s status quo. I guess my aim in life is to BE how I paint.
12. Do you feel this conditioning is present during the creative process as well?
Yes, I think it is a process of overcoming those conditionings not only from this lifetime but also past lifetimes. I am continually striving to become pure love which the religions teach but seldom follow. As I said before we really are unlimited but we think we are only this body. We are so much more.
13. Do you teach art in anyway or are you interested in being a teacher?
I have taught graphic design. Also watercolor classes, and I initiated what I called a "Creativity Playshop" which explored any avenue of creativity from producing spontaneous music, stories, dance, painting, communal poetry, etc, etc. It was quite exhilarating and I am hoping to start it again. I recently taught some children for the Arts Council (Arts Bus Program). I was “encouraging” them to paint abstracts which was a lot of fun, and I was amazed how every one of the students created something worthwhile with relative ease.
14. Do you have one particularly interesting story about your adventures as an artist? The most unusual work you've done, the hardest work, the most interesting commission, celebrities you’ve worked with, your biggest success story or biggest failure, or your earliest memory of making art.
I will tell you about the painting of Jesus that I mentioned to you before. Someone we know who comes from South Africa and does darshan with large numbers of people came to dinner. We had just finished eating and she was looking at me across the table. I could feel the energy from her which was beautiful and compelling. She said that the masters were coming in, Jesus, Mary, Saint Germaine and so on. It really felt like it; it was very potent energy. She told me Jesus had asked me to do a painting of him. In the next few days I did this painting. In fact, I used myself as the model but it turned out totally different from me. I think it was the quickest painting that I have ever done.
In the past, a couple of times I have started a portrait which turned out to be a past-life representation of the sitter, and I have done what I call essence portraits which tap into the soul of the person.
