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Aren’t color charts wonderful? I picked this beauty up at a Golden Working Artist paint demo hosted by Creations Arts Space in Boulder. What a great experience! Lots of helpful information plus a generous opportunity to dip into some specialty acrylic painting mediums I’d never tried before. I don’t know about you, but I always feel curious and a little baffled by the choices in the acrylic paint aisle. (Glass Bead Gel anyone?) It was neat to actually get my hands on some of this stuff.

Acrylic and encaustic aren’t compatible. They repel each other. So I won’t be bringing these products into my wax studio anytime soon. But they were fun to play with and I recommend them to acrylic painters who want to add an encaustic-inspired depth to their paintings without investing in the full encaustic experience. The Soft Gel and Regular Gel seem especially suited for this.

My color chart above was hand painted and signed by JR.

UPDATE – Wednesday, February 27th, 12:25 AM

Well… I tried the Soft Gel last week and it’s nothing like encaustic. Nothing at all. Layers appear thinner and are much more plastic-y than encaustic which has a depth and patina all its own. I DO love Golden’s acrylic molding paste. It’s thick and matte. Kind of like plaster with a chalky quality. It doesn’t set right away like encaustic does. Gives you time to operate.

It’s Spirit Awards season. As a voter this means I’m cramming on the nominees – watching as many films as I can before the voting deadline in February.

Julian Schnabel’s new film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (nominated for best feature, director, screenplay and cinematography) has been on my wanna-see list for awhile. I finally checked it out this weekend. Dear readers, it is stunning. Heartbreaking. Beautiful in every way. For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, it tells the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a French magazine editor who wrote a memoir by blinking his eye after suffering a massive stroke and paralysis at age 43. It’s also a film about the redemptive power of art.

Director Schnabel – who is a painter – said this interesting thing about Bauby in the Fall 2007 issue of Filmmaker magazine:

“It was as if some, I don’t know, God or whoever said: ‘You can be a great artist and have no body or you can be a perfectly healthy and normal but you’ll be an ordinary person: Which one would you like to be?’”

Hmm…

I spent the afternoon in my studio where I’m working on a large painting inspired by a historical quilt pattern. When I got home I popped into my office to check news & email. Lo & behold! Look what I found! A wonderful story in the NYTimes about a group of artists in the 1970′s and 80′s who made paintings inspired by… patterns. This is art that’s new to me and it’s fun to see. I hope you enjoy it too.

For the quick & entertaining version click on the slide show within the article. There are a handful of beautiful images there plus some interesting thoughts about art movements. What’s an art movement and why doesn’t art happen that way (borne of collective thought) anymore?

Exciting news! Joanne Mattera – esteemed painter and author of “The Art of Encaustic Painting” has invited me to screen SISTER BEE at the second annual Montserrat Encaustic Conference in June. Yay! This is a rare opportunity to join in an event that holds all three of my professional interests – beekeeping, filmmaking and painting.

As you may know – beeswax is a beautiful, mythic substance. What’s less known is the science behind its symbolism and how it’s made by honeybees. Artists who take the time to learn about these things are in for a treat. Honeybees are fascinating creatures. They provide a wealth of inspiration. And knowledge about them deepens our comprehension of beeswax as a medium. I look forward to talking about these things with artists at the conference in June.

You’re invited to stop by Joanne Mattera’s conference page for more info – dates, schedule, etc…