Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Marcia Söderman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Marcia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you share a story about the kindest thing someone has done for you and why it mattered so much or was so meaningful to you?

One of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me came as a complete surprise. A favorite early painting of mine, Portal of the Mind I, an eight-foot wide abstract, hung in our living room for several years. When we moved to New Mexico in 2018, I knew it would be too large for our future home. One of the greatest joys of being an artist is when someone truly falls in love with your work. A former protegee of mine in the WARM Mentor Program, (Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota), loved the painting and had room in her home, so I was very happy to give it to her, rather than trash it. Several years later, the protegee sold her home and moved to a home where there was not enough wall space. My work is represented by the Dow Art Gallery in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is a few blocks from a new mid-century furniture gallery, Mid-Mod Men. My protegee had become acquainted with the two owners of Mid-Mod-Men and convinced them to take my painting on consignment, unbeknownst to me until they agreed! A few months later they sold the painting. My Dow Gallery owner, Khanh Tran, had encouraged the buyer to buy it, even though from a different gallery. He refused his portion of the commission and my dear friend and protegee refused to take the commission she also deserved! I was overwhelmed at their generosity in not accepting a sizable commission on a large painting. Most artists compete with each other for gallery sales, and rarely put the work of other artists ahead of their own. Every artist needs true friends like these!

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Marcia Söderman mSol Arts
Painting in water-media: water-miscible oil, gouache, acrylic and watercolor

I’m a lifelong Art Learner! I’ve been a professional artist and on-going student of art for over 30 years. I’ve been painting and drawing since early childhood with much encouragement and support from my family.

I paint large abstractions which often hint at forms in nature, as well as small landscape paintings. My paintings and drawings, whether abstract or impressionist, are expressions of my states of mind. Although I’ve painted abstracts and small watercolors for decades, I began painting with the Plein Air Painters of New Mexico in 2019. Plein air is painting on site outdoors and is surprisingly difficult as the light changes and shadows move over the subject every 10-20 minutes. You have to battle the elements, with wind often toppling your easel. While modernist artists and critics have dismissed landscape painting as out-of-date and romantic, there has been a resurgent interest in landscape painting as climate change intensifies. Plein Air landscape painters document nature as it is now–what we may very well lose in the near future. It expresses our reverence for nature and the need for nature to remain in balance to reduce the devastation of climate change.

No matter your age or years of experience, there’s always more to learn about art, whether improving your craft or learning about the history of world cultures and their art forms. I’ve had a variety of positions which added to my knowledge of the art world. I earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in 19th-20th century art history and an MFA in painting and drawing. I taught art and art history courses for more than two decades, teaching every age group from pre-schoolers to older adults. I taught art and art history at the University of Minnesota, Hamline University and Augsburg University in the Twin Cities, and was an assistant professor of art history at St. Catherine’s University, St. Paul. I served as an artist-in-residence for grades k-8 in 20 St. Paul, MN public schools and taught art education to college students and teachers in Hamline University’s Continuing Education program.. I worked as a museum professional for seven years at The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Minnesota Museum of American Art, primarily in museum education but also in fundraising and development. I’ve curated seven exhibitions including two participatory exhibits for children for the MMMA’s Gallery 540: KIDSPACE. I was an independent curator for Landmark Center’s “Treasures of Durham Cathedral” exhibit in St. Paul. As a college instructor, I originated a course on Women in Art. Students researched and wrote a final paper about a woman artist and then created their own art work in response to the artist they studied. It was one of my favorite courses to teach. Students created their own individualized place settings in response to Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party.”
I served as an Artist Mentor for WARM (Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota) from 2007 until our move to New Mexico in late 2018 and continue mentoring and giving private lessons, which is, for me, one of the most gratifying forms of teaching and sharing my love of art.

My work has been in a number of important group shows, eg “Women and Water Rights “ 2010, curated by well-known art critique and writer, Lucy Lippard (Nash Art Gallery, University of Minnesota) as well as solo and two-person shows. It is included in many private and public collections, including the Art Collection of Boynton Health clinic, University of Minnesota. Publication of my work has appeared in art journals such as Studio Visit, International Artists, Shark’s Reef, and TOSCA magazine, and Arizona Shoutout.

My primary goal when teaching art, or giving a presentation is to share my passion for art, and to have students and participants experience art as joyous self-expression, free from negative self-criticism which is so prevalent. Visual image making is so basic to human nature that it has been essential to human cultures for over 30,000 years. We should all get to enjoy it!

My long-term goal is to have a portion of proceeds from my art sales be donated to help war victims and under-resourced, under-educated children and women in need. A modest example of this is my Ukraine Relief Project. In the late winter /spring of 2022, I created a series of 5″ x 7″ paintings to raise funds for Ukraine Relief after the Russian invasion. Rather than selling the paintings outright, I asked viewers to pick one of the paintings as a thank you for making a donation of $40-45 to International Rescue Committee, Save the Children, American Red Cross, or one of the organizations serving victims in war zones. After they made their donation, I shipped the painting of their choice to them, matted but unframed, free of charge. Through their donations, the group raised several hundred dollars in a few days. I’m creating art to be used to raise funds for these issues on a larger, longterm scale.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Becoming a professional artist has taken a circuitous route for me. I have always wanted to be an artist first and foremost, not an art historian, not a museum professional, and not a secretary in a large corporation–all forms of work I have done. As an undergraduate, limited art classes were available, so I ended up earning my Bachelor’s degree. in French language, literature and art (which I also enjoy). Life was telling me to pivot to the humanities, in which I excelled, instead of becoming a professional artist. Few visual artists can actually make a living from selling their paintings, so my intention was to earn an MFA in painting and drawing to gain a position teaching art in a university setting. Not having earned a B.F.A., I would need more coursework and a stronger body of work in order to apply to an MFA program. Finding a job was challenging so I moved to Chicago and got a job as a secretary/administrative assistant for six months at Sears Headquarters. Everywhere I lived, no matter what my job was, I continued to take classes and work on my own art. I spent my evenings taking drawing classes at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Discouraged working at Sears, I spent the next few years in limbo, moved back to Michigan and worked in a variety of restaurant and childcare jobs, Next I began a BFA program at the University of Michigan which I never finished, but most important, I found the love of my life.

Upon my husband’s completion of his doctorate in neurological psychology, he took a teaching position at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota until he retired as Professor Emeritus, much loved and respected by his students and colleagues, 41 years later.

It was in Minnesota that my life work pivoted to art history and museum work. I had been the art teacher at a childcare facility and got a job at the Minneapolis Institute of Art creating and teaching children’s classes for their education programs. This was the beginning of a seven-year career in Twin Cities museums at The Minneapolis of Institute of Arts (Mia), then the Minnesota Museum of American Art (MMAA) in St. Paul. I designed and directed children’s classes at Mia and education programs at the MMMA. My work in museum education culminated in organizing Gallery 540: KIDSPACE, an interactive art installation for children. with art work commissioned from local artists. 5,000 people attended the first opening, which was far more than we anticipated.! I truly love designing exhibitions and events for museums, but I found I was working 10-12 hour days, going to work all day, then working until midnight after supper, not a balanced division of time with a new baby. I had to squeeze my own art-making in whenever I could, but I could not establish a studio rhythm working full-time. But I couldn’t give up my dream of being a professional artist. After seven years I became disillusioned with museum politics and burned out on the excessive work hours, so I began looking for another avenue of working with art: teaching on a college level.

While working as an art museum educator I earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in 19th-20th century art history. This gave me the qualifications and credentials for teaching art and art history at several universities and colleges in the Twin Cities including the University of Minnesota, Hamline University, Augsburg College and as assistant professor of art history at St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul. Between preparing lectures, grading, and working with students, as well as committee work, teaching is very demanding, but class discussions with excited and interested students can be intellectually exhilarating!

As a graduate student, I began teaching art classes in drawing, color and a comprehensive writing-intensive course on contemporary art/art history. I taught art and art history on a post-secondary level for over 20 years. I developed a course I taught for 20 years at the University of Minnesota, Hamline University and St. Catherine’s University: Women in Art. The research and visual projects students did in response to the woman artist they studied were original, creative and thought-provoking.

As I left college teaching, I became a Mentor for over a decade for the WARM Mentor Program (Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota). This has truly been my most gratifying and joyous form of work. Mentors and Protegees often form deep bonds and lifetime friendships.

Even though I did not set out to become an art historian or a museum professional, I learned a great deal about many aspects of the art world in my previous work, including creating exhibitions, designing installations and events to accompany the exhibits, development of programming, grant-writing and fundraising. As Assistant to the President and Director of the Minnesota Museum of Art, I learned the inside workings of museum administration, board members, agendas, meetings and budgets, I also learned how intensely political museum work is. I learned how complex and how much advance planning is necessary to create an exhibit and design the accompanying programming and how time-consuming creating a marketing project is. Studying American art on a graduate level, I was introduced to thousands of artists, images and a variety of approaches to painting, which gave me a large mental repertoire to draw from. I believe all of these art-related experiences in studying art history and working as a museum professional in administration and education have greatly enriched my art-making. Studying art history provides the cultural history of art, deepening one’s understanding of it. Art is far more complex in meaning when viewed within its cultural history, rather than simply as a matter of personal taste.

At last, after leaving college teaching, and limiting my work schedule to mentoring, I finally found time to work on my art full-time. After working a variety of jobs, including being an artist-in-residence in 20 St. Paul Public Schools, then working as a museum educator, and college art teacher, I came full-circle to being a full-time Artist and a lifelong Art Learner. Every one of those positions enriched my skills and made my art deeper in complexity and feeling. And I resiliently never gave up my dream of becoming a full-time artist.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

A number of books have influenced me, but the following stand out:

Book info:
Steven Pressfield, “The War of Art: Break through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.”  2002
Wassily Kandinsky, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art,” 1911.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, “The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985” Maurice Tuchman, Director and editor, 1986.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.marciasöderman.com
• Facebook: Marcia Soderman

Image Credits
Khanh Tran
Main Photo: Dorothee Dietrich.