Artist Christine Guillot Ryan’s home studio was a Christmas present.
In her studio – and elsewhere in her rustic, wooded-hillside home in Upper Arlington – Ryan creates modular mixed media paintings of an abstract nature. Many of her works adorn walls – and some shelves – throughout the home.
As an emerging artist, Ryan was thrilled to get the workspace, cramped though it may be, to expand her growing interest in painting. It was especially meaningful to her because her son, Jacoby, now 12, gave up the room that had been his playroom for her.
Typically, the family is conservative with gift-giving at Christmas, Ryan says. When it was time for her present, her husband, Dave, and Jacoby led her down a hallway to the room that had a sign: Mom’s Art Studio.
The gift turned out to be even more perfect than they originally thought.
“Thirteen days later, I got laid off,” Ryan says. She was a website designer for a company that was forced to downsize in the economic downturn.
“It was one of those moments I felt worse for (the owner) than (myself). I ended up freelancing for him,” Ryan says.
With plenty of time to spare and some money coming in to support her hobby, she began doing more painting. Ryan opted not to set up a studio at a communal art center, preferring to stay home, where she does her design work part-time and where she can spend more time with her son.
Her easel is a table than can be folded to allow more room to spread her work on the floor. The closet is filled with no end of art supplies. Other items are stored in cabinets along the back wall, but the room is not overly cluttered. The storage space is handy.
One might liken Ryan’s art creations to scrapbooks, except there are no whole, readily identifiable pieces of paper in them.
She has a paper cutter in her studio with which she cuts long, narrow strips of large pictures, charts or Xerox copies of things such as old book pages and money. One painting has a narrow strip that shows the waves on her electro-cardiogram.
It takes a complex series of five to eight steps to complete a piece of art. Ryan creates modules of canvas on wood frames, usually four of the same size, and applies a base of acrylic paint. Her imagination has already been at work and the base matches a theme she has in mind.
“Often when I start I think I know the best way to go but end up going another way. It’s like life,” she says. Pieces of paper or other material are applied and pasted in place with special mediums. More acrylic is applied. She adds more painting by hand and perhaps more images.
Her style ultimately came with the studio “gift” from her husband and son, which included three 1’x 3’ canvases. She wanted to do one piece but wasn’t sure how to put them together. She painted three pieces. “I never fixated on one. It was so much fun,” she says.
Hearing Ryan describe what one of her works depicts is interesting. Her thinking might be considered abstract. She tells how copies of circular wood Bingo numbers are blended in. Copies are made at a nearby FedEx, “My favorite place. I’m there all the time. I bring all sorts of things … books, architectural materials, Odyssey vases,” Ryan says.
In several pieces, she has used distorted images of items such as vases or watches, created by moving them as the copy machine scans. To depict joy, items such as candy, Christmas decorations and music are combined.
The unusual aspect of Ryan’s finished works is that they are done in square or rectangular pieces, or modules, made of canvas stretched over wood frames. She usually uses four modules for each piece, although some have two or three, and she has gone well beyond four as well. The modules can be displayed in a variety of positions – stacked vertically, spread horizontally, left in a square – and they still create a finished piece of art.
“Some ideas are not overly beautiful, but I want the pictures to be meaningful. You can look at some of these for two years and it always changes – like life,” Ryan says.
Ryan has found her niche. With degrees in art and graphic arts, she’s combining them and doing what she wants, where she wants and at her own pace.
With her computer design work supporting her art expenses, and a supportive and cooperative family, Ryan sounds like she’ll be in that studio – or perhaps an expanded version – for some time.
“I have all these ideas in my head and I do not want to die before I make them real,” she says.
Ryan’s work will be displayed in a show at the McConnell Arts Center, 777 Evening St., Worthington from Jan. 10-March 3. For information, contact C@GuillotRyan.com
Duane St. Clair is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at laurand@cityscenemediagroup.com.
