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Beginning artists are invited to learn the basics of encaustic painting with me at my studio in March.

Encaustic for Beginners
Date: Saturday, March 20th, 2010
Time: 1:00 to 4:00pm
Place: TBD
Cost: $125, includes materials
Details: Here

Those of you arriving here via the Montserrat Encaustic Conference blog, welcome! It’s a joy to connect with you. I write about beeswax, honeybees and painting from an appreciative and (hopefully) curious point of view. Your comments are always welcome.

The last few weeks have found me blogging about a Wayne Theibaud interview transcript (here and here). Thiebaud’s supportive yet rigorous attitude toward painting as an endeavor worthy of spending one’s life on inspires me. He’s for painting with awareness of the world around you; an understanding of how your work fits in; and the ability to assess your own work and receive feedback and inspiration from your friends.

According to Thiebaud being a painter, a relevant painter, means participating in the conversation about what painting is. It’s a yearning for painterly conversation that draws me to the conference and spurred to me to make Wax Fetish, the talk/slide show I’m giving at on Sunday, 6/13. My hope is to elaborate on what many of us intuitively know about beeswax but have a hard time saying. That it’s important. That it has something to do with the body. And how neatly it fits into the story art tells about human beings.

Please, join in the fun.

(023) Wax Fetish: Beeswax, Materialism and Encaustic Paint
Talk: Yes, beeswax is beautiful! But have you ever wondered, beyond beauty, what your art is about? Wax has physical and symbolic properties that engender a cult-like appreciation. Find out more about why beeswax is special and how art made with it refers to the viewer’s body in this image-rich talk about encaustic painting that draws on art history, experimental film, philosophy and honeybee biology.
Level: All

Presenter Laura Tyler uses encaustic to make elemental, abstract images of plants and animals. She is the producer and director of the documentary film, Sister Bee and speaks nationally about beekeeping and honeybees. She earned a BFA in filmmaking from the Massachusetts College of Art and is a co-founder of the Boulder, Colorado, based honey company, Backyard Bees. She is a lover of sunlight, flowers and alizarin orange.

The Road, encaustic and ink on panel, 20″ x 16″

A new painting. The subject was a dill plant and while making it I had a reverie about plants growing up in a landscape of wildly abandoned concrete. The white band along the bottom is what makes this a painting and not a drawing, to me.

One of my students brought a brand-spanking-new copy of Patricia Seggebrush’s Encaustic Workshop to class. Though I didn’t get a chance to read the whole thing, I DID page through and can tell you it’s a juicy one! It’s a technique book chock full of lush, inspiring how-to pics. We passed it around the class (lots of oohs and ahs) and everyone seemed to find something take inspiration from. Highly recommended for students and teachers of encaustic.

Happiness! Joanne Mattera just posted the preliminary roster for the 2010 Encaustic Painting Conference. I will be there (presenting “Wax Fetish” a new talk/slide show about beeswax, materialism and encaustic paint, more details later.) Readers, If you plan to go, let me know. I’d love to connect with you.

A new painting.

“Psychopomp, Gold and Blue Bird,” encaustic, ink and gold leaf on panel

psy•cho•pomp
noun
In Greek mythology a guide of souls to the place of the dead.
The spiritual guide of a living person’s soul.
In Jungian psychology the psychopomp is a mediator between conscious and unconscious realms personified in dreams as a wise man or woman or sometimes as a helpful animal.

Please join me for a lecture/slide-show about beeswax at BMoCA on Tuesday evening. I’ll be speaking about beeswax, how it is made by the bees, its uses in contemporary art and what it means. Free and open to the public.

Wax Fetish:
Beeswax, Materialism and Encaustic Paint
Tuesday, October 20th
7:00 – 9:00 PM
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
1750 13th Street
Boulder, Colorado

This looks like a terrific event despite the clunky description (and very nearly warrants a special trip to New York). Check out each panelist’s link to see something interesting.

Theory and Practice: Encaustic Painting Today
Artists Talk on Art
October 30th, 2009
7:00-9:00pm
The School of Visual Arts
209 East 23rd Street, New York, NY

Panel discussion with encaustic artists and people involved in the world of encaustic art who will explore the growing popularity of encaustic painting over the last 15-20 years and address the question of what in the climate of the arts and the times has revived the use of this ancient medium amongst contemporary artists when for so long it was used only occasionally, at best.

Moderator: Ellen Koment

Panelists: Richard Frumess, Nancy Azara, Michael David, Joan Giardano and Gail Gregg

Plantai #3, encaustic on panel, 15″ x 15″
By Ellen Koment

Prosperity, encaustic, ink and gold leaf on panel, 20″ x 16″

I know it’s recession time, but the weird, lush summer we had here in Colorado left me feeling like we passed through a dreamlike period of prosperity. The painting above, inspired by a first harvest of gooseberries (from a prickly, nearly forgotten shrub we planted three years ago) is on display at the main library in Boulder, Colorado as part of the 2009 Open Studios show.

My downtown Boulder painting studio will be open to the public from noon to 6 on Saturday and Sunday October 3rd, 4th, 10th and 11th. You’re warmly invited to stop by and say hello.

Open Studios 2009
October 3th, 4th, 10th and 11th
Noon to 6:00 pm
In the alley between Pine and Mapleton at 15th in Boulder, Colorado

The Drive Home, encaustic and ink on panel, 10′ x 8″

The painting above was inspired, in part, by salad burnet.

Burnet stem and leaves

Burnet is a cucumber scented salad herb. Like many herbs, it’s a vigorous grower but wilts quickly when picked. Its leaves are soft and flimsy and it has beautiful curving stems. Though I don’t often use serrated leaves in painting (too zig zaggy) I’m happy to make an exception for burnet leaves. They remind me of an animal’s hands, and when painted brown, they remind me of oak. Either way, they charm me. I hope you like them, too.

Strangely, the lines I get when I draw from the real offer more surprises than those that spring from my imagination alone. All my current work is inspired by plants. I don’t aim to copy them, but use them as a way to ground my hand.

Gravid, 10″ x 8,” encaustic, ink and gold leaf on panel

Grav•id
adjective technical
pregnant; carrying eggs or young.
• figurative full of meaning or a specified quality : the scene is gravid with unease.
ORIGIN late 16th Cent. from Latin
gravidus ‘laden, pregnant,’ from gravis ‘heavy.’

Art Opening and Hors D’oeuvres
Thursday, August 13th, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Wright Kingdom Real Estate
4875 Pearl East Circle, Suite 100, Boulder
Hosted by Open Studios and Wright Kingdom

Two Moons, 10″ x 8,” encaustic and ink on panel

Two Moons is one of ten new encaustic paintings on display this month at Wright Kingdom in Boulder, Colorado. I made the series using beeswax to create a skin-like sheen over rigorously cropped drawings of leaves, stems, pods, flowers and other pert, green things. The opening is tonight. You’re warmly invited to attend.

Art Opening and Hors D’oeuvres
Thursday, August 13th, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Wright Kingdom Real Estate
4875 Pearl East Circle, Suite 100, Boulder
Hosted by Open Studios and Wright Kingdom

The other exhibiting artists are Annette Coleman, Theresa Haberkorn, Donna Mayo, and Joan Wolfer. All wonderful.

Old Fashioned Rocketry, encaustic and ink on panel, 5″ x 4″

Do you watch NASA TV? My husband streams it in his office so I get to pick up bits and pieces whenever I stop by. The broadcasts are sweet and earnest, astronauts and crew doing important work with gratitude and a touch of old fashioned gallantry.

Superkitty, encaustic and ink on panel, 5″ x 4″

Superkitty is my alter ego. She’s like Hello Kitty but scruffier, older and over being cute.

Spring Blade, encaustic and ink on panel, 5″ x 4″

We’ve had an extraordinary spring and summer here in Boulder, Colorado. Lots and lots of rain! It’s mid-July and everything’s still green. The world is light, precise and easy. I don’t remember summer ever feeling this way.

It’s an honor and a pleasure to announce a suite of ten new encaustic paintings hanging in the lobby at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. The concurrent exhibit in the main part of the museum, Pure Pleasure, is excellent, by the way. Definitely worth checking out. Admittance is free on Farmer’s Market days.

It’s an honor and a pleasure to announce that Sister Bee is screening at the Belfast Free Library on June 23rd as part of a series of bee events hosted by the Maine Farmland Trust.

Included in the festivities will be a showing of encaustic work by Belfast sculptor Beth Henderson, photographs by Michelle Olson from Caribou, and various educational displays. For more information about these events please contact the MFT Gallery Coordinator Anna Witholt Abaldo.

One of my favorite shapes is that of naturally drawn wax comb. It’s the edges that thrill me. They’re rounded, precise and have a beautiful way of approaching boundaries, sometimes touching edges and sometimes not, always with grace and intelligence.

Foundationless brood comb

It’s a shape I think about a lot, and one that occurs over and over again in my painting. Here it is in 2008.

“Elephant,” encaustic and ink on panel

And 2007.

“Haystack,” encaustic, colored pencil and watercolor on panel

And again…

“Mars,” encaustic on birch

Often, when people think about bee comb, hexagons come to mind (understandable so). But it’s roundness, I think, that best describes the shape of the bees.

Feral colony found in an owl house. Photo essay here.