Emily: Peggy McNamara is a fixture in the halls and behind the scenes at the Field Museum
She's doing research of the artistic nature
Peggy's the museum's only artist in residence and has been studying
drawing and painting the specimens on display
and in the collections for the past 35 years.
Some of you might not know this but the whole reason I got
into Natural History Museums in the first place was because
of art. My internship at the Philip Bell Wright Zoological Museum in Montana was for art credits.
And I spent my last semester of college drawing and painting specimens in the museum
That's how I first fell in love with science and nature and the same goes for Peggy, too.
So this episode is pretty special.
Peggy came down to The Brain Scoop studio, so she and I could make some art together.
Emily: So, Peggy, I guess just to get chatting while we're sitting here drawing our beautiful caracal
You've been an artist here at the Field Museum for a number of years.
Peggy: A long time
Yeah
Peggy: I came in my twenties because everything held still and there was free parking in front
I thought maybe by osmosis it would make me a better and I sort of believe that
Looking at well made things putting him down carefully
Isn't that what scientists do? (Emily: Yeah) And then they get an idea.
And I think my whole drawing method is,
revolves around having enough time and I crawl from here to here to here to here.
Well. That's a luxury
Then I curl down here, and it's all wrong then I curl down here
I mean the tenth time through its right.
Emily: So when you hold your pencil up and I kind of I do this too.
Sometimes I feel like I'm faking it, sometimes I feel like it works. What are you looking for?
Peggy: I'm holding like if I'm holding right. Where is the tip of his ear here? Where does it begin?
(Emily: Yeah) So I hold my pencil and close one eye, and
it's right above here now this I wouldn't just go: Oh, that's down
Again, where's that point and it's right above his eye here, and how far over, and then
It's MapQuest. You know, when we have kids
in the museum, if you could put a piece of tracing paper around the glass
and you gave him a pen and they didn't move they could draw it perfectly. (Emily: Yeah)
That's all we're doing.
Emily: You've got an eraser there too.
Peggy: I always have it and I first day a class I give every one one
(Emily: Yeah), and say it's the most important tool that will ever use.
Emily: more important than the pencil. Peggy: Yes.
I think editing, knowing when you're wrong and changing it, everybody does it in writing,
everybody does it in a lot of things.
I don't know why they think you supposed to have the drawing right first time through.
Emily: So when you start painting.
Peggy: I just did it putting, like, big simple.
And you know he is, you know, we're desperate for something, so any place
I can think of sticking another, like there.
Emily: You just went for it just with the blue.
Peggy: there
Peggy: Sort of the compliment of the yellow, but I can figure this part of his body is in shadow and
this is the whole watercolor thing
If I try to work it (Emily: hmm-hmm) like if you naggy somebody (Emily: Yeah)
They'll never do it.
So the only way to get him to work is to let him dry and do the next layer the only way you get into
trouble is
forcing it too quickly.
Emily: This is the part that I like (Peggy: Yes, of course) it's like you're you can be like a chemist
I start by putting a really annoyingly bright
color down in the background, and then I usually go over it later
But I'm just gonna put yellow on it.
Peggy: Yes, there you go
Emily: It's why not?
Peggy: Is the weirdest long body isn't it?
Emily: Yeah. It's a big noodle. It's like a very giant hairy sausage.
Peggy: And then I try to I don't want any color to feel left out
so..
Emily: Like they talk to one another?
Peggy: Yeah like oh, she likes you better than me.
So I try to get everybody on there
And then I can always bring it back to something dull.
Emily: So when you look at something like this
you don't just see brown and yellow and tan.
Peggy: Right, I am
using lots of blues
and and I always am including the
complement, so they'll be violet.
Emily: Aren't you ever afraid that something's gonna turn out looking like Lisa Frank?
Peggy: I, I, have enough bad ones, Emily, it doesn't bother me
I don't know how you get the good ones unless you accept a few bad ones, right?
Emily: Yeah
Peggy: Its all that what I do.
Emily: That's a pretty good lesson no matter what you do.
Peggy: Yes. Emily: so how did you end up in the bird division after painting figures?
Peggy: Yeah
So you know how so much as instincts like right now your instincts are telling you what to do.
Not some law that you learnt in school, right? Emily: Sure
Peggy: So how does one improve their instincts?
So my theory is you look at perfectly made things and then maybe
It'll internalize or something. Emily: Birds, then, you, what's what's perfect about birds?
Peggy: Oh, they're not they're surprising. Don't you think?
Emily: Yeah.
Well, they're fun. Peggy: Yeah, their colors, just like, it doesn't make any sense half the time.
It's like wow it's like all the hair now
Finally people's hair is like it's like birds. I guess uh someone today was great great pink hair, I
thought, finally
fun hair
Emily: So do you have colors in mind when you start going?
Peggy: You know (Emily: about this) I put out the primaries and secondaries
so there's a red and a green a purple and a yellow and orange and a blue (Emilly: hmm-hmm) and then
everything that they're all transparent. (Emily: Yeah) so that's like dating it's nothing as permanent
(Emily: Wait) yeah, no cadmium or anything that's after I'm committed.
Emily: I feel like that my cadmiums, my cadmium yellows, and
my cadmium reds are like my my go to
I just started by putting cadmium yellow in the background.
Peggy: But you can cover up on acrylic easier.
Emily: That's true. Peggy: So I do that, but all those kinds of routines
(Emily: Mm-hmm) I even hate saying when I am in class cause someone will think they have to do that.
Emily: They'll be like, Oh. Peggy said I should.
Peggy: Yeah, which you know get your own you can develop your own
thing. I mean it's hard to take off a cadmium.
Emily: My art teacher kind of told me to is that a line
Isn't really like a line when you see the edge of something that there's there's no lines in nature
Everything has some sort of shape or contour so when it comes to making the lines, you're just on the
painting you're just taking a different value of color and filling in the rest of it. What did they call that technique?
That's not the sfumato.
Peggy: Yes.
Emily: I remembered.
Peggy: Very impressive that you just came up with that word
Peggy: You know I'm putting white in my cat's eyes, and he's gonna. Just it's like waking him up
Like, Hi.
I'm alive.
Emily: Man, this is a sort of painting I could spend a really long time on in
And still feel like I'm not getting anywhere. I think it's just cuz he's got this big noodle body.
Peggy: It's because he's all yellow.
Emily: That, that as well.
Peggy: Yes, it's
his fault, Emily.
Emily: And then if I was really gonna gonna do this like finish it
I I'd do a lot of the texture with the palette knives. Whoo.
Here we go. Things have been crazy now.
Now he looks like he's like running out of a prairie fire or something.
That's fun.
There we go.
Tada. Peggy, what's one thing that you wish people knew
or appreciated about art?
Peggy: I think there's much more talent out there that ever gets awakened
(Emily: Yeah) I think they get discouraged because they see end product whereas in school,
you know, you start you're in first grade you go to basketball, and you play all summer
And you know but somehow this they think they gotta come ready made (Emily: Yeah) with an idea and ability
and it's just if it works as a
meditation for you, then you're supposed to be doing it, I think.
Emily: Yeah, there's um there's no judgment here.
Peggy: Yeah, and who says, nowadays, what's good and that you know.
Emily: why not just make a thing (Peggy: right, right) and enjoy it.
Peggy: Make a thing. Emily: Yeah, I like that.
Emily: Congratulations. yours, I'm, this is beautiful
This is amazing that you could complete that in, in just a short amount of time, feel like you're really captured
Peggy: Well, I think (Emily: some of the animal) I did okay, I would never yeah
I never spent a day it's always five days. This composition worked after all that in the beginning.
Emily: Yeah, do you think so?
Peggy: Yeah. I don't, I think his body was not interesting.
Emily: Yeah, cuz he's got this kind of the noodle body and then kind of the noodles up here.
Peggy: Yeah, you needed more time (Emily: Yeah) to his texture.
Emily: to develop the noodles a little bit more. Peggy: Noddle development.
Emily: This is really where all the fun was happening up in the face. (Peggy: Yeah). I can't say that
I love this blue now that I'm looking at it
But you know what you know always go back and redo it.
Peggy: Yes, you can nothing is final in art. Emily: Yeah. Peggy: Praise.
It still has brains on it