Mimi Wyche can’t remember a time when creativity wasn’t central to her life. Engaging in creative endeavors—from singing and acting to painting and sculpting—has long been the space where she felt most comfortable. “I was always making art, making messes, and doing theater at the Greenville Little Theatre back when I was as young as six or seven years old,” she recalls.
These days her paintings take center stage, in the form of ethereal abstract landscapes that reflect a mood or a memory. She finds that the format of a landscape gives the viewer a place to enter the piece: “Here’s the ground, here’s the sky—the rest is up to your imagination.” She plays with texture by mixing cold wax with oil paint. Building up thin layers of wax and paint produces the luminous quality her work exhibits, while color, be it subtle or bold, sets the mood.
Here’s the ground, here’s the sky — the rest is up to your imagination.
Mimi’s path to painting has been a circuitous one. Though she majored in art at Stanford University in California, while there, she also took acting classes and voice lessons. “[Visual arts] was where I thought I was headed,” she says, “but [after college] I got an opportunity to go to New York and study with [celebrated Metropolitan Opera soprano] Eleanor Steber.” Mimi worked in New York for 20 years, appearing on Broadway and off, and as a soloist with the New York City Symphony, among other regional companies. But during intermittent periods of unemployment, her artwork was always waiting in the wings.
In the past 15 years since she’s been back in her hometown of Greenville, Mimi has found herself drawn more to the visual arts. Through the interplay of ground and sky, her canvasses invite viewers to launch their own exploration through the worlds she imagines.
when I’m in the flow of it, everything in the universe syncs up. I feel connected to everything in a way that I don’t feel at any other time.
Sharing her artwork, however, is a recent experience, and one that makes her feel vulnerable—a surprising sentiment for someone who has performed in myriad theater productions and done six one-woman shows. “To me, theater is very much about community . . .” the artist muses. “In singing, you’re sharing your inner self and in acting you’re sharing your emotions, but it’s always through the framework of a character—even if that character is me singing a song, I’m telling the story of that song. In painting I’m also telling a story, but it feels much more intimate.”
Whether the curtain’s up or down, it’s the creative process that thrills her. “And when I’m in the flow of it, everything in the universe syncs up,” Mimi shares. “I feel connected to everything in a way that I don’t feel at any other time.”
Check out Mimi Wyche’s work at mimiwychestudio.com; or downtown at the Mary Praytor Gallery, 26 S Main St, marypraytorgallery.com.
