Meet Wanda Mumm

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Wanda Mumm. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Wanda below.

Wanda, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?

Growing up on a farm in the Midwest fostered any early sense of work hard, take care of your family and pride in a job well done. My first set was a John Nagey art set. Even though I always had chores, I would steal away a few hours a day to work on my art.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I am an oil painter living in Montana. We moved here from the Midwest so I could learn to paint the landscapes of the west. I had long dreamed of painting the western landscape but living in the Midwest did not lend itself to the western interest.. we loved going to the mountains yearly and decided to make the move. My earlier career had on painting birds. Many of the national shows I was part of highlighted. my bird paintings but I waned to be west. My move to the west has been very rewarding as my work has appeared at museum shows and galleries. Plein air is my favorite style of paintings and some become larger paintings from the smaller plein pieces I work on in the field.
My most recent fascination is the night sky in selected areas of Glacier and Montana. trying to capture the colors of the milky way has been challenging and exciting. These night sky pieces have been recreated in gems by Diamond Art. I have created 30 of the night sky pieces of art. In 2024 one was selected as Peoples Choice at a Museum show.
Art has been my muse since the age of 13 when I got my first art set it gives me great joy.
I teach art weekly with both school age students and adults. Sharing my training with my students is my way of giving back some of the art education I have gathered through the years,

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Learning the spectrum of light and how that knowledge gives your objects in a paintng dimension but with a glow of light. It was imapctful when I discovered it, I asked myself why hasn’t any of my classes or instructors shown me this before. i spend most of my time now looking for that type of scene where you can see how the spectrum of light effects everything for a painitng.
Value knowledge is also an important feature. You can do just about any color on an obejct and as long as the values are correct it reads right. You can paint a purple horse and people will still know it is a horse if the values are correct.
Atmospheric color for landscape paintngs is another feature that gives work depth and a sense of realism. When you add all of these together a painting has a sense of 3 dimension, a feeling of space and the colors can be realistic or egaggerated and it will still be believeable.

Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?

I have been part of an organization called the Susan K Black Foundation for over 20 years. There is a core group of us who were the start up group for our workshops. We meet every Tuesday night to discuss paintings by zoom. These artist are colleageus I have taught with and learned from for more than 20 years. When we have an issue we send pictures of what we are working on and we discuss how to improve our work and we also discuss other work we find which can be good pieces or pieces that need work. We often joke we should write a how to book for others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wandamumm.com
• Facebook: Wanda Mumm

Image Credits

All are my paintings and shots were done by my husband Les.