Lack of energy does not plague Tiffanie Mang. Before many of us have our morning coffee, she has been for a run and painted a plein air piece. “I’m very impatient, so getting it down as quickly as possible is a part of me,” she says. “I don’t want to obsess over the rendering; I’m most interested in getting the light and dark shapes down to make the composition — that’s what is most important to me. I want to capture the spontaneity, the first feeling that the landscape embedded in me. I want to remember that one split second that the landscape spoke to me. That’s what’s really exciting. It may be the patterns of leaves, or the silhouette of trees. I don’t want to think too much about the process, because the moment I do, I start to stiffen up. I just let myself melt into the landscape to capture the subtle color and value shifts. I like to see how fast I can paint while maintaining the integrity of the painting.”
With Mike Hernandez as a mentor, Mang taught herself how to paint in gouache. “I practiced at home first because gouache can be a bit finicky,” she says. “But when I got better, I started going out plein air painting in gouache. I learned on my own and by repetition. Then I explored the medium even more during the pandemic. My work is quite different from what I painted a few years ago. I like seeing a gradual improvement in my work, and that is only realized when stepping back sometimes.”
She unironically reports that she “used to be a fast painter,” but now it sometimes takes her more than 30 minutes to execute a plein air study. More important to her than spending much time on a piece is feeling focused and ready to paint.
Her predilection for fast painting makes her well suited for depicting sunsets and sunrises, and this she does. Mang tones her canvas with burnt sienna, and applies the gouache thickly. Her brushstrokes aren’t showy, but they are distinct, and she is adept at using the direction of her strokes to guide the viewer’s eye, to further build the composition, and to add excitement to the painted surface. “The brushwork comes naturally,” she says. “I think about movement and gesture, with brushstrokes plunging down, indicating the movement in trees, or creating sweeping diagonals. It just happens intuitively. The first strokes I put down might get covered, but the movement remains important. I use a flat brush for carving out bigger shapes in the beginning, and that also helps establish a direction. Later, I use a round brush for more lyrical or staccato marks — the round brush lets me explore a bit more. I go back and forth with a flat and round until I feel like I have harmony with my strokes.”
