This semester I interviewed, Blythe Mayfield who is a female local artist that lives in Cleveland Tennessee, born in 1981, and still currently lives in Cleveland Tennessee. As for her academic career, she went to the University of Chattanooga for one year, graduated with a bachelor in science with a focus on art therapy from University of Illinois when she was twenty three, and graduated with a master in art therapy from La Trobe University in Melbourne Victoria Australia at twenty five. Her artistic style is much like her personality, very bright and filled with copious amounts of color; giving amazing detail and a dreamy, realistic quality to her work which she incorporates in different medias such as oils, collages, and sculpture.
Mayfield has made past contracts with the alternative schools such as TLC, Teen Learning Center, Goal Academy, and had worked with other alternative city and county schools. She has done other contract jobs besides working with alternative schools Mayfield loves working with individuals because she believes that “creative art is an alternative method for externalizing feelings and conveying messages without having to rely on words alone.” She’s also done therapy in age care facilities, community hospital, maternal and children’s health facilities.
One of the reasons Mayfield got interested in art was because of her Father; who unfortuanitly left the family when she was only three years old; but only used artwork as a means of pleasure. Her mother also practiced in art as a style of painting and drawing, but wasn’t confident in her work after and later stopped all together. Her younger sister is also an artist, graduated from S.C.A.D. with a BA in visual arts and painting; so Ms. Mayfield grew up with a very artistically inclined family. Mayfield also explains that art was a way for her to materialize and process the world around her when she was little and that it was one of the influences that led her to choose her career.
Mayfield illustrates that some of the things that inspire her art work and working with individuals in her field is “The human mind, the fact that we have our own perceptions on life, how differently we perceive the environment around us, and the fact that everybody has their own story.” When Mayfield is soully working on her own pieces, one subject seems to really be involved with her latest work, which is “A woman and her role in the present and how it has changed from what it was in the past, even though there has be some ideals and cliché expectations of the past for a woman that has still bled through here to the present. Another subject that seems to work its way into Mayfields inspiration and interests, are vintage children books, which she explains in great humor by saying “I guess I’m compensating for the childhood that I never really had.” What really seems to be interesting is that Mayfield didn’t get fully involved with art until her first year of college at UTC, yet has become quite successful in her field of work and as an artist.
Mayfields home life was a bit of a trail for her when she was little and as she grew up. Living in a house hold with a single working mother; who became depressed after her husband had left; and not having a strong sense of support, being left alone as a child and not being able to process the world around her. She explains that “art helped me to processes the world around me and not having a father around at the time fucks it up, making art was the only thing to turn to.” Another strange characteristic about her was that she was a cheer leader back in high school; she explains that it was an outlet for her back then and saying that it also “made me more extroverted.” I became more interested in Mayfields home life and asked how her families’ art style was different from one another? She says that for her it’s a way to process her internal world, therapeutic, almost ironic in a way since the pieces come out looking so colorful yet she dresses very differently. Her sister, who she says, is very different in her style, she intentionally goes into her work with a message; usually it comes from a feminist perspective; which Mayfield explains that she pulls out a message after the work has been finished. Her mother unfortunately never had a style since she never kept up with her artist talent after the father left the family.
Blythe Mayfield is a charming and very down to earth artist, not to mention really fun to have an interview with. She is one of the very few artists that you can fall in love with their personality and their artwork.