Black Barn Fine Art Studio - By Artists - For Artists
A Candid Conversation With Artist-Founder Eileen F. Sorg
Eileen Sorg has been building a following of art collectors and students for more than a decade, and she has no plans of slowing down. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Eileen to talk past, present, and future for Two Dog Studio (her long-standing personal studio) and her newest endeavor—The Black Barn Fine Art Studio.
Art making is a daunting career path. Without going into the more obviously lucrative directions like marketing, animation, design, etc, there is huge risk involved. Investing time into refining your skills, researching what’s relevant, and seeking feedback without being enrolled in a structured art institution may feel near impossible to artists without heavy financial backing. Not to mention the business acumen required to make it all come together on the backend once the art is created.
It may be shocking to learn that Eileen Sorg is no exception to this generalization of the art-inclined individual. Instead of seeking art making as a career from the get-go, she actually first sought a profession in animal biology and wildlife preservation. Thankfully, she didn’t let her love of drawing dissipate during her time out in the field. If anything, her education spurred a deeper understanding and appreciation for the critters that would dominate her compositions for years to come. “I do think all the hours I spent stuffing mice for the Burke Museum and all of that and studying—just all of it did significantly form kind of the way I represent the subject matter in my work and how I kind of try to stay respectful with them, but still kind of show them as sentient beings and not just cute little woodsy creatures.”
About ten years after going the “safe” route, Eileen inched back into her passion with sensible baby steps—like joining the Colored Pencil Society of America, and joining a co-op gallery, in addition to taking workshops here and there as her schedule could allow.
Shortly thereafter, something happened that many artists dream of. Eileen was contacted by a representative of Walter Foster Publishing with an offer for a book deal around her colored pencil techniques. The benefit of the deal was not only financial; but also an outside confirmation that she was on the right path. “It gave me that bravery to go okay, maybe I could, you know? Practical me. I bought the whole ‘you can’t make a living being an artist’ thing, which was kind of the mantra. And I thought, well, if not now, when?”
While finding her voice and working through the business aspects necessary to move forward, she felt a growing frustration with the lack of atelier learning options to help her excel more quickly. “It’s just been this strange unguided pathway to where it is now. Wherever that is.” Not that her medium would have been taught specifically at a “normal” atelier. Eileen’s primary process involves intricate design and planning, followed by laying down strokes and swaths of black ink, then blocks of watercolor, then layers of hyper-detailed colored pencil that cover every bit of the composition.
While many artists utilize both watercolor and colored pencil simultaneously, it is rare to see colored pencil layered in such depth, detail and dimension. “It was almost like I paced myself; like I created my own weird little atelier, like oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna learn how to draw, but I’m gonna stay with black and white, you know, and I’m going to work with the tones and what I can do with that. And then, I kind of get that, well I’m gonna I’m gonna start adding color and go into that.” Atelier or not, Eileen has continued to invest in ongoing arts education as she can. She attributes some of her career-shaping skills to artist teachers like professional watercolorist Sue Ellen Ross, and oil painter Kent Lovelace.
Some aspects that drive us forward, however, cannot be taught, but rather are ingrained in us from childhood. For Eileen, an example of this is her longtime love of stories by Beatrix Potter. “If I still find an old Beatrix Potter book, I’ve got to buy it… And I certainly channel her work quite a bit. We’re different because that biology part of me won’t let me put little clothes on them or put little hats on them or anything. I can’t do it. And she does but–I don’t know. There’s just something about the way she, I don’t know. She just treats them very respectfully and gave them great personalities.”
Storybook-worthy animal characters in an accessible medium, you may think that Eileen has children of her own or is guided by a passion for caretaking, but she quickly dispelled that notion with a laugh. “I get that a lot–like, on this one piece, you could create a whole children’s book story! And it’s weird, you know, me the one who has never had the kids. It’s like, let’s make art for kids or let’s make stories for kids. Who knew?” But you don’t have to be a parent or caretaker to resonate with Eileen’s work. Good storytelling isn’t just for children, though you may heal your own inner child if you spend any length of time immersing yourself in her characters and plot. If you want to get even more familiar with Eileen’s characters, she now offers workshops a few times a year where she takes you through an original piece, teaching you her full process and giving you the knowledge you need to take the method home with you.
Her teaching is practical, which makes it easy to remember and apply to your own work long after your in-person encounter–which is completely by design. “You’ve got to break down your process so thoroughly.” Thankfully for her students, Eileen has paid for a wide array of workshops in her career and knows what can make or break a learning experience. “It’s always frustrating when you take a class from somebody that has an amazing skill set, but just is not a great teacher. I basically look at it like, if I’m my own student, what do I want out of this class?”
Not only has this shaped her own teaching methods, but it has helped shape long-term goals to offer a wider breadth of art education to the community she calls home–the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. For several years now, Eileen has been dreaming, planning, and building a new arts education center and artists’ sanctuary, The Black Barn Fine Art Studio. A place where she hopes to help fellow artists refine and expand their skill sets, and also help “regular-ass people do magnificent things.”
A large driver in creating this space? Artist community and collaboration. “As artists, you kind of have to embrace your inner hermit. It’s not a group project. You know, you work alone. There’s some part of me that was obviously missing that sort of collaborative interaction that you get around other creatives.” She adds, “I'm a social introvert. I’m mostly kind of a hermit, mostly just kind of stay to myself, but there’s parts of me that want to have that interaction with other like-minded people.”
If effective classes and vetted teachers, or artist community and collaboration, aren’t reason enough to visit the Black Barn, then the landscape just might win you over. Settled on a farm near the woods in beautiful Kingston, Washington, there will be no shortage of inspiring natural beauty and a sense of escape here. And the greenery won’t be only living highlights on the property. Yes, you read that right, the Black Barn is nestled on a farm, complete with a draft horse and other delightful animal friends. If you’re lucky, you may even meet Eileen’s unofficial mascot, her scruffy, sweet chihuahua, Olive. “Yeah. She’ll have different sweaters every day.”
A peaceful, optimistic location such as this, you may be wondering–why is the studio black? While Eileen likes to joke about her “Goth” tendencies, the true reasoning is far more edifying. “I can take like a red pot, a red glazed garden pot, and I can put it right in front of the wall of the barn. And then I can put this little fern in the pot. And, you know, on most buildings, it's cute and so it's there. There's something about the black of that barn or the black in general that allows those things to kind of shine on their own, right? It really falls back and you know, allows itself to kind of pull back and disappear and create a backdrop. So that thing, that pot or that chartreuse fern just pop off. And it's all about them. Right? Just, just the nature of black. And so there's that physicality of that. And I think it carries over in my brain as metaphorically like this space, this black barn—I hope that it does that for people. It's there to put us all together and bring all this information and all this sharing of knowledge, and allow people to come in and kind of soak that in and really shine on their own. And so they'll become the little red pot with the fern in it.”
If you’re ready to experience this obelisk of arts education in the forest, your first opportunity is right around the corner–the upcoming event Art in the Woods, November 10-12, will be The Black Barn’s grand opening. While touring the facility, you’ll even get a chance to meet a couple of the teaching artists–Derek Gundy and James Andrews–who have workshops available at The Black Barn in early 2024. You will have the opportunity to sign up for these workshops right then and there, or if you want to make sure you’re on the roster before classes fill up, you can see what’s already available on our website: www.blackbarnfineartstudio.com
See you there!
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