A spirited evening of painting with Briar West 

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect on Thursday when I walked into Gallery MAR on Park City’s Main Street for an evening of painting using rubbing alcohol, ink, gin and whiskey, but I didn’t think I’d be blowing air out of a straw instead of using one to sip a drink. 

A group of writers and editors for publications including Park City Magazine, Salt Lake Magazine and yours truly, The Park Record, was hunched around a table over slick sheets of Yupo paper, each huffing and puffing into the plastic straws with all our might. As we did, rubbing alcohol and drops of ink flew to the corners of the paper like balls on a billiard table. 

Sure, it was art, but it was more of a science experiment. Manipulating the movements of liquid was physics. Making the alcoholic ink dance from chemical reactions to drops of gin and whiskey was chemistry. And the result, many paintings looking like cross-sections of geodes, was geology.

The scientific aspect was the initial appeal of the art form for our teacher, Salt Lake City-based artist Briar West. 

A former medical researcher, her mind is all math and science. She conducted clinical trials testing medications for allergies and asthma until three years ago, when she started doing art full-time. But the art began much more like one of West’s clinical trials.

She divorced over a decade ago and began to realize she was bored during the evenings.

“You can only watch so much TV,” she joked. 

So, during a trip to an art supply store, she bought some alcohol inks on a whim. That’s when she began her experiments, diluting the inks with rubbing alcohol, fingernail polish remover and even brake fluid, just to see how the inks would react.

“I was having a good old time, and I noticed myself staying up all night. I wasn’t trying to make art. I just realized (that) when I was done, I felt better. It was kind of like a meditation hack,” she said. 

As the hack became a habit, she showed her cousin the results. She asked West for a custom painting to hang on her wall. That was when West realized that her experimentation had gone beyond chemistry or therapy — it had become art.   

“It never dawned on me,” she said. “I can’t draw a figure to save my life.”

She jumped onto Instagram in 2016 and began amassing a following. 

But crisis struck four years later when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and rubbing alcohol began flying off of store shelves almost as fast as toilet paper. 

In search of a solution (or perhaps liquid consolation), West rushed to the liquor store and bought a bottle of vodka. And thus, her obsession with combining ink and spirits in her artwork was born. 

Her operation has only become more extreme over the years. Instead of using a straw to move the liquids around for larger pieces, she uses a blow dryer or even a leaf blower. 

Perhaps the most extreme example of West’s experimentation was when she got “overly curious” and drew her own blood — something she’d become an expert at through clinical trials. 

Combining the blood with red ink so it wouldn’t turn brown, she created a series called “We All Bleed the Same Blood,” which she donated to the Salt Lake City location of Encircle, a nonprofit serving Utah’s LGBTQ+ youth and young adults.

While drawing blood was her favorite part of clinical trials, the job came with the stress of precision, no room for error. For West, part of the appeal of painting with ink and alcohol is letting go of control. Stains can be layered, and smears can be reimagined as seemingly deliberate strokes.

“I’m not going to say no to you,” she said at the beginning of the class. “You’re going to say, ‘Should we do this?’ The answer is going to be yes.”

Though she’s worked with many liquids, vodka is still West’s favorite, both to drink and to paint with. 

“When I do a big piece, I’ll have the hair dryer on full blast, and I’ll have my big bottle of vodka. And I put my thumb over it, and I let it go a little bit, and it just sprays. And that’s how I get this big ocean effect on the bigger pieces,” she explained.

As for us students, we painted using spirits from Park City’s Alpine Distilling — though we didn’t consume them until the class was over and we’d moved to the Alpine Distilling Social Aid & Pleasure Club.

“We love Utah laws,” joked owner Sara Sergent.

It wasn’t until I was sipping an old fashioned when I realized I’d been painting with Alpine Distilling’s baby, the Triple Oak whiskey, ranked the best American whiskey of all time by “Enthusiast Report.” 

The Triple Oak is Alpine’s Utah Straight bourbon whiskey, aged at least an additional year in a barrel made of American and French oaks. A 750 mL bottle goes for $180.

I nearly choked when I realized I’d been wasting a few of its precious drops on my amateur attempt at artwork. 

To her credit, West was very generous in her evaluation of my piece. She said personalities shine through in each painting and guessed that I’m a thoughtful, extroverted introvert from my composition and use of orange. 

West recalled a class she had given at her home to a mother and her daughters. They forgot their artworks, so the next day, the father came to pick them up.

“He showed up and said, ‘Well, that’s my wife, and that one’s this daughter’s, this daughter’s and this daughter’s.’ And he was right,” West recalled.

West’s class on Thursday was the first she held at Gallery MAR, though she has no current plans for additional classes there specifically. She does host classes regularly at the Alpine Distilling Social Aid & Pleasure Club (where drinking while painting is permitted) and is also available for private booking. Learn more at alpineparkcity.com and briarweststudio.com.