Long before brushes touch canvas, artist Grace Flott sits down with her subjects to discuss their passions, ambitions, and the desired message of their painted visage.
“I’m always trying to get at the heart of the story,” Flott says of her portraits.
Capturing a subject in this way allows Flott to tell their stories as clearly as possible.
She adds, “For me, realism is a way of connecting and being present.”
Former Washington State University President Kirk Schulz is the Seattle-based artist’s latest focus.
To convey a subject’s true nature in brushstrokes, Flott must first build rapport. She’s found that humor is the best way to break the ice. She reassure patrons that, unlike the subjects she studied in art school, they will remained fully clothed throughout the process.
Schulz’s portrait is scheduled to be unveiled at 4 p.m. Sept. 8 at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on the Pullman campus.
Rediscovering artistic ambitions
Growing up, Flott relished opportunities to capture her imagination in pencil drawings or with pastels. While she consistently took art classes in high school and college, she initially didn’t consider it as a career path.
As the time to choose a college approached, the Spokane native visited Pullman with her classmates and was even able to tour a gross anatomy lab. While she didn’t pursue a career in medicine, she would later spend a significant time studying anatomy from an artistic perspective.
Flott chose to study economic policy, social justice and labor relations at the University of Washington. During that time, she had the chance to study abroad in France, where she visited some of the world’s foremost art museums.
However, she never expected her time in Paris would end the way it did: Desperately dropping from a fourth story apartment window to escape a deadly fire. The incident left her with significant burns over her body, a broken ankle, and a fractured vertebra in her lower back.
Back in Seattle and in the midst of recovery, Flott’s new purpose came into focus.
“It was while recovering that I was figuring out what was important to me,” Flott recalls. “I wanted to find a way to talk about the experience of really seeing your body completely change, of waking up with a different physical reality.”
She continued, ”I was noticing that experiences like mine were not shown in media, and so I turned back to art, because I really wanted to learn how to tell stories about body variation and celebrate different physical realities for myself and people like me.”
Much of Flott’s art focuses on subjects whose bodies don’t conform to the archetypical figures shown in historical portraits hanging inside museums or vast private collections. In painting those with physical differences, she’s careful to capture them as they want the outside world to see them: powerful, radiant, joyful.
In addition to her portraits and other artistic endeavors, Flott also hosts scar print making classes for burn survivors, helping them turn the texture of their bodies into art in a process that’s often cathartic for participants. Her support for burn survivors also extends to volunteering and supporting Camp Eyabsut, a day camp that serves youth with burn injuries. A portion of sales from her recent exhibition also went to support the camp.
Capturing leaders
A few months after hosting her New Icon’s solo exhibition in Seattle, Flott learned the Washington governor’s office was looking to hire an artist to paint a portrait of Jay Inslee. Having just concluded an exhibition heavy on portraiture and with much of her life lived under the Inslee administration, Flott applied and was selected to take on the project.
A few months after that unveiling, Flott had the opportunity to paint another Washington state leader: outgoing WSU President Schulz.
Ryan Hardesty, executive director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at WSU, served on the selection committee for the project and said Flott quickly rose to the top of the candidate list.
“Grace Flott stood out immediately because her work conveys a profound sense of presence and humanity, which we felt was essential for capturing the spirit of President Schulz’s leadership,” Hardesty said. “Her practice and life-story are truly unique and worth celebrating. Grace also demonstrated a thoughtful and collaborative approach, which made us confident she would honor both the subject and the institution in a meaningful way.”
Flott first sat down with Schulz at the Spokane campus and again at the Tri-Cities campus, with the latter sit down including a photo shoot. During these conversations, Flott said Schulz talked about the challenges he grappled with during his time as WSU president and how he was guided by a dedication to the Land Grant mission of access, opportunity, and community service. Schulz was accompanied in these interviews by his wife Noel, who helped to bring out Kirk’s personality during the interview process.
Flott also reviewed previous WSU presidential portraits to better understand existing conventions within the collection. As a departure from these historical portraits, Flott is depicting Schulz in an outdoor setting and with brighter hues than his predecessor’s portraits.
“I think what fits well with Kirk’s personality was a painting that is very light-filled and bright to convey an uplifting feeling,” Flott said.
