Debbie Giese and Other Local Artists Find Innovation In Painting Fans By Writer and Contributor Emily McGinn
Debbie Giese, second from right.
Local artist Debbie Giese, alongside 12 fellow artists in the area, is gearing up for a showcase and fundraiser on June 6 at the Sherman Library & Gardens, where they will be selling fans that they have painted.
However, these fans come with an innovation on the longstanding art form of fan painting: while most fans are decorated with acrylic, watercolor or pen and ink, Giese and her artists are oil painting the fans.
They first started working with the medium last year, when they were invited to participate in a convention held by the Fan Association of North America (FANA).
“We were in an international Zoom meeting with FANA, and they told us that nobody paints fans with oil,” Giese says. “It was very unheard of — a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of deal. So we were breaking into something no one has [really] ever done before.”
Oil painting with fans has been done in certain instances. However, in the long history of the art form, which dates back thousands of years and spans cultures from China to Europe, it has remained rare.
“Hopefully people will understand this is a new, unique way of painting. And who knows? It might take off,” Giese says.
Giese, who is a teacher at the Palos Verdes Arts Center, incorporated the fan painting into her class curriculum, giving her students an opportunity to learn a new medium and showcase and sell their art at the upcoming Sherman Library & Gardens fundraiser.
The artists say they are learning as they go, since oil painting on fans rather than canvas requires a change in thinking. While the principles of design remain the same, painting on fans presents unique challenges. For example, the silk or paper material is thin, which means the artists have to be lean with their paint usage. They also have to be more accurate in their strokes since fans have two sides — if they want to cover up a stroke of paint, it will still show through on the other side.
The texture and shape of the fans also require a different approach. They have ridges, and different shapes of fans do better with certain images or paintings than others.
However, the challenges can also serve as strengths; for example, because the artists’ work can show through on the other side, one might be able to see the pencil drawings that began the painting process. This gives one side of the fan a raw, unique look into the artist’s process.
“I really like the fans. It was fun to do something different,” painter Susan Miller, a student of Giese’s, says. “It was exciting to do something different. It was more whimsical.”
Oana Iulia Gamlowski has embraced the new medium since they began painting fans for the FANA convention last year. She will be displaying and selling multiple fans at the upcoming Sherman Library & Gardens fundraiser.
Gamlowski, who has been painting since 2019, says that the new medium has allowed her to find new creative freedom in her art.
“It was a new medium where I could play and not feel pressured,” Gamlowski says. “It felt like I could experiment.”
Gamlowski likes to experiment with the shape of the fan, searching for ways to incorporate the leg of the fan into the painting, for example.
Gamlowski is constantly finding inspiration for her art in her daily life. One fan she painted, which features a rose on a tan background, she recalls painting during a day when it was 100 degrees outside and she was without electricity. The heat of the day found its way into the painting through the sand-colored background.
It is images like these that inspire Gamlowski as she paints.
“I have a collection of thousands of things I want to paint in my life,” Gamlowski says. “The fans have given me an opportunity to just try and play.”
This is the full list of artists whose work will be displayed at the upcoming fundraiser:
Oana Iulia Gamlowski
Jinha Kim
John Waldron
Susan Whiting Manning
Shiva Asrari
Paula Tuckerman
Gayle Taylor
Joelle Normand
Diana Trout
Lillian Landiva
Jean Lo
Julie Robison
John Stalder
Susan Miller
More about Deborah Giese: https://degiese.weebly.com/
Bio:
Emily McGinn is a journalist based in the Los Angeles area. She enjoys reporting on and writing about a variety of topics from lifestyle to news, especially in her areas of specialty, environmental science and political science.