Pieces of Everett artist Mahllie Beck’s soul, on canvas

By Sara Bruestle / Special to The Herald

Mahllie Beck’s canvases are both fiery and serene, thorny and soft, heartbreaking and soul-lifting – “beautiful chaos,” as the Everett-based artist describes her work.

After a one-woman show at Lucky Dime in downtown Everett, a spotlight in the “40 Under 40” exhibition celebrating women at the Schack Art Center, and space in a North Puget Sound Conference on Race exhibit at Everett Community College, Beck is just getting started.

The artist, 24, specializes in mixed-media, murals, printmaking and upcycled, or recycled, art.

She is known for “FEMME,” her acrylic painting on a vintage postcard that was on display at her “Love Games in a Flowering Garden” show at Lucky Dime.

“‘FEMME’ is a representation of the divine feminine,” Beck said. “She represents pieces of ourselves that we cherish. Creator of life and therefore creator of all creative spirits.”

Her work featured in the Schack show, “Cracked Open Heart,” is an abstract mix of paint and wax, each color representing a different emotion. She painted it by brush, palette knife, drip and pour.

“I’ve been constantly trying to bandage and stitch up my broken heart — but I realized there’s no reason to try to baby it,” she said. “It just needs to crack open so I can heal again and not just hurt.”

Beck, a Snohomish High School and EvCC graduate, was working at Uncle Harry’s Natural Products in Redmond as the CEO’s assistant — who also made commissioned artwork for the modern apothecary — when she founded her business Dirty Docs in 2020.

She may be an emerging artist, but today she’s a full-time one. Since starting Dirty Docs, Beck has shown her artwork at Lucky Dime, Schack Art Center, Everett Community College and Fresh Paint, all in Everett. She also has about 10 murals throughout Snohomish County, including at Grain Artisan Bakery and Maple + Moss Boutique in Snohomish.

“She’s just really started to blossom and become her own artist,” said Alex Vincini, a fellow artist who owns Lucky Dime. “It’s beautiful to see someone with so much potential start fulfilling that and really going all out because that’s what it takes.

“You’ve got to jump in with both feet, that’s definitely what Mahllie is doing.”

‘A piece of my soul’

Beck’s style is decidedly expressionistic. Her feelings and ideas spill onto the canvas, sometimes in the form of color: Pinks are vulnerable. Blues represent desperation. Black is depression.

“Literally every piece of artwork that I have is a piece of my soul,” Beck said.

Her art has evolved over the years. In college, she fell in love with painting and printmaking. More recently, she’s added textures through collage, needlework and upcycling. Sometimes she puts words to canvas.

“I overcomplicate everything, so sometimes I’m quite literally like, ‘This is what I’m talking about. You don’t even have to think about it. This is what I mean right here.’”

Many of Beck’s paintings are vibrant and impassioned, whereas her murals are calm and ethereal — in a word, freeing.

“It’s almost like I leave Earth when I’m painting a mural,” she said. “I’m just painting leaves, and then I come back and I’m like ‘Woah, that’s a lot of leaves.’”

Her latest mural is at the Black Lab Gallery in Everett. The 11-by-19 foot mural, inspired by downtown Everett’s historic buildings, is of exposed brick and overgrown plants in white.

The plants are painted to look like they’re taking over the gallery’s upstairs bar. Spackle adds texture to the mortar around the bricks. A plant wall is next to the piece, so that art imitates life.

While she studied art at EvCC, Beck signed up for an herbalist apprentice program at Cedar Mountain Herb School in Seattle. That apprenticeship led to the name Dirty Docs, since she’d often go on foraging hikes and dirty up her Dr. Martens.

“I’m really inspired by plants,” Beck said. “That love of plants goes in my art in a lot of ways.”

She doesn’t just paint plants. Other murals of hers feature a flock of parrots, koi in a pond and a fanning peacock.

If you didn’t know Beck was an artist, you may have recognized her as an activist.

In 2020, Beck helped organize Black Lives Matter peaceful protests to honor the life of George Floyd in her hometown of Snohomish. The demonstrations made national headlines, including in The Daily Herald, after they were hijacked by Proud Boys with Confederate flags.

The Generation Justice-led protest in Snohomish was featured in the documentary “What Happened on First Street,” by Glacier Peak and Snohomish high school graduates Carolyn Yip and Drake Wilson. Beck is featured in the 2021 documentary exploring racism, law enforcement reform and social justice. “What Happened on First Street” won the National Education Association’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Award.

‘Art is changing on me’

Beck was recently diagnosed with bipolar II disorder, a type characterized by depressive and hypomanic episodes. When she wasn’t on medication, Beck vacillated between feeling sad, hopeless, euphoric or irritable for days or weeks at a time. Those episodes fueled her art.

“I’m sure there’s going to be a lot more art having to do with that, especially now that I’m medicated for it,” she said. “I’m stabilized, so even art is changing on me.”

Now that she no longer has bipolar episodes, Beck works slowly and steadily, rather than flying from one idea to the next. Her latest work is a series of abstract mixed-media paintings on raw canvas.

But change is hard, especially when mental illness and artistic talent are so often intertwined. The notion that artists must suffer to create is romanticized and rarely challenged.

“I’ve been trying to remind myself that you don’t have to be unwell to be a good artist,” Beck said.

The artist’s Everett studio is like a blank canvas itself: Houseplants, art books and her own works add pops of color. Beck has a drawing desk, but most of the time she paints from the floor.

Before it was her space, the Rockafella Artist Studio on Hewitt Avenue was rented by Lucky Dime owner Alex Vincini. He paints in acrylics and does mixed-media and graphic design.

Lucky Dime, also on Hewitt, is a venue for up-and-coming artists not unlike its predecessor Black Lab Gallery, which moved a block away last year. Vincini, the Lucky Dime owner, was impressed by Beck’s “Love Games” exhibit held there this year.

“It’s very bold; there’s a lot of statement to it,” Vincini said, adding that Beck’s “Love Games” show was well-attended. “That’s what draws people to her work; it has a lot of intention and a lot of feeling behind everything. You can work your way around a piece and feel like there’s a narrative to it.”

Exhibitions aside, Dirty Docs has been a year of trial and error for the plant-loving artist. Beck is learning to run her own business. She’s figuring out how to price original artwork because “souls are priceless.” If she works on commission, the art still needs to matter to her.

She holds her piece “Cracked Open Heart” especially close.

“That one has a huge chunk of my soul,” she said. “I don’t know who is going to keep it super safe.”

More information

Find “Dirty Docs by Mahllie” on Facebook or visit mahllie.com to see more of Mahllie Beck’s art.

Sound & Summit

This article is featured in the winter issue of Sound & Summit, a supplement of The Daily Herald. Explore Snohomish and Island counties with each quarterly magazine. Each issue is $3.99. Subscribe to receive all four editions for $14 per year. Call 425-339-3200 or go to soundsummitmagazine.com for more information.