LIFESTYLE
HU students are finding creative Words by Lydia Hansen
Roommate = easel
Depending on your perspective, either Payton Mansfield lives in a painting studio or her painting studio lives in her room.
She describes her approach to painting as a form of realism where she tries to recreate a photo in oil. Her first subjects were celebrities or characters from TV shows like Game of Thrones and Walking Dead, but she branched out to paintings of family and friends soon after.
Life and oil painting have gone hand-in-hand for Mansfield since she got her first oil paints in high school. Now a junior and English major at “I’m not satisfied with the painting until Hamline, Mansfield adds new work to the collection stashed away in her room someone else can look at it and say it’s this person or that person,” Mansfield on a regular basis. said. “That’s how I could tell I was good She also does commissions. at it.” Mansfield has painted on commission Although completing commissions is for four years, mainly portraits of harder during the school year, Mansfield people’s kids. Most of her paintings decided to be more public about her are about the size of a laptop and take artwork and plugged her willingness to seven hours or more to complete, do work on commission through social depending on whether they are full media this February. color or black and white. Photos by Sophie Warrick
6 | Canvas
“It was super scary for me,” Mansfield said. “I’m scared of looking full of myself, but I just made this post [on social media] and people were really awesome about it.” A self-taught painter, Mansfield learned most of what she knows about painting through trial and error and from the internet. “There’s so much I don’t know about oil painting still,” Mansfield said. But the more she’s done it, the more she’s fallen in love with the art form. “If my future is just, like, painting and being an artist, I would love that.”
