Marsha Ives
Early on in life, Marsha Ives found people’s faces fascinating. Now she is doing her part to change the face of the mural and faux-finish painting professions.
by Jeff Woodard
while I drew portraits of them,” says Ives. “I also loved horses, and drew them every chance I got.”
Born in Kalispell, Mont., Ives moved to Sacramento with her family six weeks later. Painting and drawing figured prominently in her adolescent and young-adult years. When she moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1973 to work on a dude ranch, her interest in painting continued. Soon, Ives was combining her portrait skills with knowledge gained from a drafting course she had taken in college. Painting was becoming “self-sustaining ” to Ives.
“I painted and made drawings of architectural designs for an engineering company part time and had a lot of support for my work,” she says. “Combining these two skills, I produced many portraits that included architectural backgrounds. I showed my work, won prizes, and sold everything I finished.”
Striving to develop a painting business that would dovetail with her fine arts’ skills, Ives took her first mural painting class at the Joanne Day Studio in San Francisco in 1992. “The change in my career began from that point,” says Ives, crediting Day for inviting her to work on challenging projects in Memphis, Tenn., and Enid, Oklahoma.
“I volunteered to help with the studio work involved in these locations, and in exchange, she invited me to the work sites to execute the designs we had worked out together,” Ives says of Day. The Oklahoma opportunity afforded Ives the “best exercise for reaching my potential as an artist. Nowhere else have I found the decorative style we utilized in this location.”
Ives’ professional pursuits have not been limited to the United States. After a friend notified her of a web-site address promoting opportunities overseas, Ives wasted no time. “It was not a hard choice to make,” says Ives of this fall’s weeklong trip to Cornwall, England, to study with Janet Shearer. “This artist’s style was similar to mine, only better, and I wanted to learn her techniques. The class was wonderful and the only drawback for me was it wasn’t long enough. I’ll just have to go again.” Ives says there also are courses in the United States that she would like to take when she is able to do so.
“Faux finishes are wonderful, but they are over in a matter of days, and I walk away from them without feeling much connection,” explains Ives. “Murals are more closely attached to my feelings and how I see my talent best expressed.” Her whimsical murals often feature allegorical themes, animals, humans and “far-off landscapes.”
She took on her first faux painting project in a large Victorian mansion bathroom in Alameda, California. “My assignment was to create a scene with balustrades and forest, with mountainous desert beyond. I also painted a sky with vines and angels, and made the walls resemble weathered and cracked old stone. Then, I marbleized the floor and even painted marble on the sides of the claw-foot tub as a finishing touch.”
Ives’ “sanctuary” of a workplace is a basement where walls are lined with cabinets containing paint, wood-graining tools, brushes, buckets, sponges, rags, tracing paper, books and hand tools. Tabletops are filled with faux-finish samples and designs in the drawing stage. “There are postcards and magazine pictures taped up everywhere that I find useful as source of ideas for project I may be contemplating or am currently finishing,” notes Ives.
To prepare for finishes, Ives prefers to apply her own base coats, ensuring that adhesion problems have been resolved and that walls are repaired properly. “Smooth plaster walls primed with an alkyd-based tinted primer are my favorite to work with for faux finishes,” says Ives, noting that faux finishes can be applied successfully to almost any surface. “But for murals, I want to work on smoother surfaces.”
Painting primarily residential property interiors, Ives says her only attempt at exterior faux finishing was a success. “I used three colors over a Navajo base coat, and the walls were a semi-smooth texture stucco. It made an otherwise plain and unassuming curved entryway to a mansion look more inviting and interesting.”
Faux designs are created when background colors combine with foreground glaze colors, Ives explains. “Often, it may look as if three colors have been applied, when actually, one color has been used over another.” Lighting plays a major role in the appearance of faux finishes. “Sunlight filtering through trees or nearby bushes, or even a reflection from a swimming pool, can add green to a room.”
The type of lighting also is key. Incandescent light is Ives’ favorite. “It is usually warmer, less glaring and adds yellow.” Fluorescent lighting, conversely, takes away warmth and adds a bluish hue; halogen adds a purple cast and “can change soft yellow glazes into pale lavender,” according to Ives.
Ives learned a valuable lesson in lighting when she tried to duplicate a luxurious look she had created in a client’s bathroom. The client wanted the same look in her dining room, so Ives obliged. The room looked great with the lights off, but when the lights came on, “It was awful. The southwestern exposure and the reflection from the swimming pool on the trees outside turned the original gold finish a weird shade of green. I tried different ways to fix the finish but nothing worked. In the end, we decided to nix the faux finish idea and repaint the room instead.”
Armed with her color deck, 2x2-foot samples and portfolio, Ives visits the scene of each proposed job. “I survey the room for what fabrics are being used and ask to see samples of fabrics they may add.” Ives then takes into account the rugs and carpeting to be used in the area. “If I still do not have an adequate palette to bring it all together, then I go home and make a sample, after consulting my color deck.”
Ives often makes several samples based on her observation of the job site. When doing murals, Ives constructs scale designs to give the client an accurate idea of what the room will look like. “Sometimes I will build a diorama for a design out of cardboard, and tape copies of the scale design to the walls. That approach helps to reduce some of the mystery in the end result.”
Various factors affect Ives’ mural estimates: What size is the room? Is a portrait involved? Does ceiling height require scaffolding? Ives’ faux finishing rates are in the $250-$400/day range, depending on the design for the finish. Her base-coat fee usually is about $300/day.
To feed her creative appetite, Ives takes figure-drawing classes twice a month. She also takes advantage of the outdoors. “When I am riding my horse, I am completely relaxed. I let go of all the stress created during the day. It also loosens my back, and I finish my ride feeling no pain.”
Taking long trips into the country, drawing on a rainy afternoon and talking with friends are other ways in which Ives opens her creative channels. “I am the queen of relaxation techniques,” she says proudly. “And almost all of these techniques return to creative energy.”
Ives’ own creative sense has been complemented by the interior designers and contractors she has met along the way. But her best tool for attaining more work is her portfolio, she says. “Each job I finish, I photograph. I am very gentle about advertising what I do, and I prefer to let the photographs sell my work for me.” Ives says her business includes about 350 clients. “Each time I see a client, new or old, I pull out the portfolio and show them what I have been doing. I also contact the interior designers who have used my services in the past and update them on what I have been doing.”
As for being a female painter in a male-dominated industry, Ives says obstacles have been few. Sometimes, she says, older women fear for her safety on a ladder. “There also was an incident when I went to an equipment store to rent a sprayer,” recalls Ives, “and the clerk wouldn’t rent it to me. He told me I could bring my husband back, and he would rent it to him. I went somewhere else.
“On every job, I always have felt the need to prove that I could do the work well and exceed expectations,” asserts Ives. “It didn’t have anything to do with whether I felt insecure about my status as a woman. I just wanted them to know I could do it better than anyone else could.”
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