ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
When Erica Nordling holds a paint brush, her soul finds freedom, and she said for her, she loves the freedom painting brings to her.
“It’s like connecting to your soul,” she said. “Whenever I get to sit down, when I get to paint, my soul gets to breathe.”
While the Hugoton resident has been doing art her whole life, it was only in 2020 when she first began practicing on a daily basis, and this is when she was giving herself more freedom to create without trying to do what she had seen in other artwork.
“I started to bring my own creative ideas and play with mediums and my artwork a little more,” she said. “Every day, I have an opportunity right now to paint.”
Nordling was the Artist of the Month for September at Liberal’s Baker Arts Center with an exhibit featuring many of her pieces, and she said her love of art came from her grandmother who was a part of Baker in the 1980s.
“Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved art,” she said.
Much of Nordling’s work centers on landscapes and flowers.
“I really like flowers,” she said. “In Hugoton right now, I have a flower shop, and I am able to teach art classes over there. If I’m not painting flowers, I’m working with flowers. With Southwest Kansas, I think we have beautiful landscapes and sunsets. I’ve been doing a lot more in landscapes lately.”
Nordling, who owns Lynnie’s Nest Floral & Art Studio, a full service floral shop offering art classes and art for sell in Hugoton, said she likewise gets inspiration from nature, particularly its colors and flowers.
“You look at a wheat field, and you see yellow in a wheat field,” she said. “I see purples and blues and oranges and pinks, and when I look at things with my artist eye, it’s really fun to imagine how I would paint something. I’m inspired everywhere I go. I look for different colors of things.”
Nordling said her creative process often starts in nature’s home.
“I love to go outside and take pictures of places that are meaningful to me,” she said. “Over the summer, my kids and I went to Colorado, and we went on a nature walk of wildflowers. I took a lot of pictures with the intention of painting them. Right now, I’m working on those.”
Nordling said her creative process simply boils down mostly to taking pictures, sketching a painting out, putting it on canvas and painting it.
In addition to Baker Arts, Nordling’s art has been featured in some other area locales.
“I’ve been featured in Garden City at a couple places,” she said. “In Hugoton, I was at the courthouse. I was at the Satanta coffee shop, and now, I’m at Baker Arts.”
Nordling said having art on display is a nice way of getting her name out and having people recognize her and her artwork.
“I’ve been to Garden City Art in the Park a couple times, and I’ve had people come back to me because they bought a piece of art prior,” she said. “They come back because they want to get an additional piece of artwork from me. That’s pretty cool.”
Nordling said art lovers have found much to enjoy about her paintings.
“They love my colors,” she said. “They like my textures, my colors, how I work with my mediums. I get a lot of really good feedback from my art.”
Nordling has done much work with acrylic paint, but recently, she began doing oil paintings too. On average, she spends about six hours a week painting, and this depends on how busy her floral studio is, as Lynnie’s Nest provides a few other products and services for customers.
“I have gifts in the front,” she said. “I do art classes. When I’m not busy with the flowers, I can sneak off and paint at the studio when I’m done there.”
As her art was being displayed at Baker Arts, Nordling hosted a sip and paint party Sept. 13, and she said she does many such events for private or group parties.
“They’re fun,” she said. “People can come in, and we pick a subject we want to paint together. I use a large dry erase board so I can teach step by step instructions on how to paint.”
Nordling said she hears from many people who say they cannot even draw a stick figure, but she said these people can still learn to do art.
“I say if you know how to draw a circle and a square and a basic line, I can teach you how to paint,” she said. “One of my favorite things is watching people learn how to paint and be proud of what they did and repeat to come back and learn more. It’s really exciting for me.”
For Nordling, art is both an expression and nonverbal communication.
“Artwork can say different things to different people at different times, and sometimes, we can walk by the same painting 100 times and see something different 101,” she said. “It’s just the interpretation individually to each person.”
