Brynn Wallner and the Positive Influence of Painting People's Pets
The NYC painter on finding creative satisfaction in your mid-to-late 20's.
VANCOUVER – If you look up multi-hyphenate in your dusty copy of Webster’s dictionary, chances are you’ll see Brynn Wallner staring back at you. When she’s not working as a creative consultant or writer (W Magazine, Nylon, The Zoe Report), Brynn is busy running the preeminent women’s watch website, DIMEPIECE, and painting one of a kind pet portraits, which is actually how we met. In December, I commissioned Brynn to paint our cat Studio. Our conversations were so fun, I asked to interview her about painting and her creative process.
I caught up with the 30-year-old at her mom’s house in Florida. Our conversation, which has been condensed and edited for clarity, was honestly more inspiring than my little Pisces brain could have dreamt. In many ways, Brynn’s story is the story of side-hustle creatives. She is populist without being pandering, chic without being a snob, and always, always, always unapologetically herself. Oh, and did I mention she’s extremely good at Twitter?
ES: So obviously, I love your painting. Can you just tell me a little bit about how you got into it? Looking at your Instagram it seems you’ve been doing this a couple years now.
BW: I never painted before. When I was younger, I loved to sketch Sailor Moon… I would always sketch them and just get the big anime eyes and their gorgeous thin long bodies. I was just really inspired by them. And so I think, because I was so into that… I got good at sketching, but I never went anywhere with it. I did photography in high school, like dark room, but I never ever considered myself as an artist… I always knew I was creative but I was just like, yeah I know how to draw, whatever.
Then when I was 27, or I think 28 or 29, I felt myself in a rut. I was working all these corporate jobs and I felt like I didn’t have any sort of creative outlet… There was some obstacle. But one time on a random Saturday my boyfriend and I went to that place called Color Me Mine – do you know what that is?
ES: I do, it’s like a… there’s many of them right and it’s like painting or something?
BW: It’s like little kids birthday parties. So we went to Color Me Mine in Chinatown and we were painting a coaster set and I was like “Painting is so fun!” And [my boyfriend] must have remembered that because then he gave me a painting set for my birthday and I was like “Oh great, now I have a painting kit.” It was only out of an effort to validate his gift-giving where I was like “Goddammit am I really going to sit right down and paint?” And then I looked at my dog and was like “I’ll paint Honey” and [it was] actually really good.
It was a shocker to me. And then I showed it to some people and [they] were like, “Oh my god you should paint my dog or my mom’s dog,” because everyone’s so desperate to find good gifts for people. Like, gift-giving is such an art… you gave yours as a gift, right?
ES: I mean, I gave it to the cat himself so I’m not sure it was exactly the same but…
BW: I would say that it is!
It just all came together really quickly. All of a sudden I was getting all these orders and I was just like… I’m not even a real painter, I just learned how. They’re getting better with each one, so it’s been really exciting
ES: You say you hadn’t painted before, but do you have any influences or anything like that? Is there any work that’s inspired you in some way?
BW: When I started getting into painting I also got a new job at Sotheby's, the art auction house, and I was working out of their headquarters on the Upper East Side. All the art would come in and out with the cycle of the auction season. I was always into David Hockney and Matisse and kind of those like, almost considered basic [painters] at that point. But I was like, “Who cares if everybody loves these artists.” I love the colours, I love the shapes... it just really connects with me. And then being able to see that in person, I was just like “Oh my god this is so amazing.” It really made more of a connection for me. Ludwig Bemelman’s Madeline drawings have also inspired my kind of one-off sketches, like I don’t know if you know who Chris Black is but I did a portrait of him in that style…
ES: Oh sis…Why do you think I’m here? Chris Black is to blame for all of this really.
BW: My god Chris has been such good press for me.
ES: I have a low-key theory that you are part of a scene that’s coming up through the pandemic, where it’s like all these How Long Gone tangentials are suddenly having a big moment
BW: The How Long Gone Effect.
ES: Exactly! I also wanted to ask you – how would you describe your visual style?
BW: Sometimes I’m like, does this look like a kindergartener made it? Where it almost feels really juvenile. I mean that’s me being mean but also celebrating it because… I feel like I’m very well connected with my inner child and I try to celebrate that as much as I can. My cellphone background is me when I had chicken pox and I look like such a little weirdo and my boyfriend’s says “You’re such a narcissist that you would have a photo of yourself as your background.” I don’t know… It’s just like a reminder of my inner child and I feel like that spirit lives within me. With pets, they’re just such innocent creatures and when I paint them, they come out in a way where people have said I capture their spirit really well. Which I hope I did with yours.
ES: The thing with [Stu’s portrait] that we loved is there’s a little detail where you made his paws really big. It’s funny seeing that you are creating a piece, and you may not even realize what’s resonating with you, but then you give it to other people and they’re like “Wow she totally captured it.”
BW: That’s funny – the big paws! They are so big, I’m looking at it.
ES: I noticed there’s also a level of humour and levity in your work… How do you bake that in, or do you even think about it that much? Is that just your personality being reflected in the work?
BW: My personality is so present and I just can’t mute myself. I feel like inevitably, that just carries on into the work whether there’s intention there or not. It’s this subconscious thing where I’m funny and I’m very light and I’m a very positive person and I think it goes into the work.
ES: Was it harder at the start when you had those firmer corporate ties to feel like you could let your personality show? Cause that’s something I consider a lot when I’m doing Human Pursuits or other creative work.
BW: I mean I’ve definitely pissed people off at work before cause I’ll just be too sarcastic, or I’ll just rub people the wrong way. I’m always really nice and stuff but it’s really hard to conform.
ES: It is!
BW: Most people I connect with and it’s easy, but every now and then there’s outliers who I’ve worked with who are like “It’s too much LOL you need to dial it down!” It’s not like I’m some crazy bull in a china shop, I can turn on the professionalism. But I can’t not crack a joke, especially in the corporate world where everybody is so fucking serious. I’m like, we’re not curing cancer. We’re talking about how to market Cheezits to guys in Milwaukee who like to watch football. This is funny!
ES: Pets is kinda like your bread and butter, the thing that’s most on your Instagram. But your other work is really beautiful too, like, the painting of your grandfather’s house… Is there any subject matter you would like to spend more time exploring?
BW: I did this really cool painting for an art show in New York City two summers ago. The theme of the show was Daisies which I think was like Czech? It’s this old movie and it’s these two girls and they’re just running around being crazy and cute… That was the only prompt. And I created this very abundant scene of cake with all these forks in it and cigarettes and fruit. I wound up selling it.
ES: Oh wow.
BW: I kinda miss it, I wish I had kept it. But I was like “Oh my god someone wants to pay money for my work?” Like beyond just a pet portrait. So I was really quick to get rid of it. But I would like to do more scenes like that. Kind of still life-y but there’s humour in this too. There are like 10 forks smashed into the cake.
ES: From a logistical standpoint, it seems like DIMEPIECE is blowing up a little bit. Has that made it harder to paint, or are you prioritizing that over painting?
BW: Ugh god, it has been getting in the way of painting and I feel bad because of it. But I’ve also got a lot of other work too. I’m doing more writing… I get all these inquiries on my pet portraits and I want to do them but I have so little time that I even kind of halted promoting it on my Instagram, cause every time I promote somebody emails me and I’ll not respond for like three days. So I don’t know. Nobody’s written about my painting before. DIMEPIECE is the first time anyone’s given a fuck about me from a press perspective, so I like that you’re focusing on the art, honestly.
ES: It’s silly but was there anything you wanted to chat about, or any perspectives you wanted to share about painting?
BW: The only thing I would say is if you have a creative dream, or if you think you have tapped out on your abilities to do anything creatively, do not get stuck in that rut. You might pick something up and it might be when you’re 28, or it might be when you’re 50. I talked to my therapist about this all the time when I was younger... I was like “I don’t know what to do, I know I’m creative but I don’t feel fulfilled. I feel all this creative energy but I don’t know where to put it.” And then I picked up painting and it lead to so many other things and so much positivity in my life.
Don’t give up, you’re never too old to discover a new talent (▰˘◡˘▰)
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