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94 maconmagazine.com | April/May 2024 B r e n P o w e l l INTERVIEWED BY MM STAFF PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE ARTIST Bren Powell is one of the many talented artists participating in the 2024 Plein Air Arts Festival in Macon. During March, selected artists venture outdoors to paint scenes from life in Macon. The collected works from March's exercises will be displayed at Macon Arts Gallery from April 5 – 26, 2024. Bren Powell grew up in the Carolina foothills and moved to Macon soon after college. She had always painted, but for 34 years, she focused on her career as a behavior specialist and raising her family. But in 2010, a trip to Egypt pivoted Powell's life. Mesmerized by the encaustic portraits she saw in the Museum of Cairo, her lifelong love of painting reignited. Soon after returning home, she undertook coursework at the Encaustic Art Institute of Santa Fe, then studied with Ezshwan Winding in San Miguel Allende, Mexico, to learn this complex painting method. The medium dates back to the 5th century BCE and uses beeswax, tree resin, pigments, and fire, used to melt the materials and create what Powell calls "that richly evocative translucent surface." It's an intricately technical process. One too- hot torch flame can melt an entire work, Powell noted, but she loves "its unpredictability and association with antiquity," and has passionately pursued it for the past 14 years. What inspires you? The complex interplay of my visual and emotional responses to nature, relationships, and everyday objects. I feel a strong desire to paint not what I see but what I feel. I may start painting a seascape and end up with a very abstract image of the color and shape of the undercurrents. Why do you create your art? I keep painting as my way of being in the world in a way that is meaningful to me. I often go to sleep thinking about the next day in the studio. I paint very intuitively, so when someone connects to it, it brings real joy. I'm certain the therapeutic creative process carried me through difficult times. It is now a passion that starts my day. How does Macon contribute to your work? The Macon arts community has been very supportive and offered opportunities for exhibitions, particularly the Macon Arts Alliance. I also belong to a critique group that has been encouraging and welcoming even though I work in a very different medium. Do you have a location in mind for your Plein Air Festival works? Because I have to work off an electrically heated palette, I will be sketching on a birch panel in various locations and will return to the studio to "Macon is an extraordinarily b eautiful city and ne e ds to b e put on canvas as of ten as p ossible." A r t i s t s p o t l i g h t MEET HER IN THE MAG BEFORE HEADING TO THE SHOW, OPENING APRIL 5