Wild Arts Festival, Portland, November 17-18, 2018

This is the final year for the 6x6 Artist Open at the Wild Arts Festival. I made two works of art this year using watercolor, collage and topped by encaustic.

Harry Heron - before the encaustic top layer

Harry after the encaustic layer - photo enhanced.

A side view of the 1.5 inch cradled panel. A better depiction of the final colors.

Autumn Crow - before the encaustic top layer

Crow after the encaustic layer

The encaustic wax does dull the colors, but you can touch the surface! It soaks into the paper layers and changes them somewhat.  The work can be shined with a soft cloth every couple of months.  

More information about the festival is here:

http://wildartsfestival.org/

They will put up a slideshow of all of the 6x6 works for this year before the festival.

Portland Audubon Society Wild Arts Festival

It's almost time for the Wilds Arts Festival held in November by Portland Audubon Society.

http://wildartsfestival.org/  This year it takes place on November 24 and 25.  Lots of art and books to peruse.

Corvus II, Corvus I, Blackbirds

There is always an open show of 6 x 6 art works to raise money for conservation.  I donated three pieces this year.  Water color topped by clear encaustic medium on 6 x 6 x 1.5 inch boards.  I love that the encaustic medium gives an atmospheric look to the art and it allows one to touch the paintings.  I struggled a little with this batch, but you can only be where you are at the moment. The middle one, Corvus I, was done while we still were dealing with smoke from the forest fires in the Columbia Gorge. Corvus II was more abstract. Blackbirds was inspired by blackbirds in the reeds by Cathedral Park in Portland.

Wild Arts Festival

Encaustic: Rue de Pic

The Audubon Society of Portland puts on the Wild Arts Festival every year - this was the 31st.  This year, the event was November 19 and 20, 2011.  I created a painting for the 6x6 show.  The art piece needed to have a bird as the subject. Art Media, now Blick Art, donated a 6x6 canvas. Each artist created a work of art and it is sold for $40. The artist received acknowledgement, free tickets to the events and some nice coupons. 

I painted a watercolor picture on water color paper and then affixed it to the canvas and added the encaustic to it.  Using heavy staples and a dark colored encaustic on the sides definitely give it a bit of an industrial look.  As usual, I enjoyed the combination of water color painting, language play (pic = woodpecker in French, and the Latin for Flickr is up in the left corner), real postage stamps and encaustic paint.

The show is fun - lots of people and art. Bob and I showed up Sunday afternoon and I was pleased to see my work was gone.  Phew - I didn't have to buy it myself!  I picked up some art cards of herons - inspiration for painting another favorite bird.

I barely made the deadline for the show.  I've been pretty lax and felt a bit rusty, but I managed to get something together!

Latest Commissions

Oh - doesn't that sound nice: "Latest Commissions". My friend asked for a few more of the "Pear Mail" series. I made a few as gifts as well. (Jenny? Raegan?)


Of course, once I received a request and a deadline, I went into resistance mode. I put it off as long as I could.



The story of my life.

The same thing happened with crochet. My niece asked for a scarf made from yarn she chose. I had to make her a hat, scarf and gloves from yarn I picked out before I could get around to making the one she wanted. Of course, don't even get me started with my regular work.

The scarf and hat colors I chose.

The scarf and hat colors she chose

They're both nice. Both easy.

My sister Rachael's scarf.

I can't be the only person who has resistance issues. Anyone else have any stories? Remedies?

Dee Dee in the window on a sleepy January day in Portland.

"Pear Mail" Series

The other set I created for the Oregon Society of Artists show are done in watercolor with clear encaustic on top. The boards are Claybord Aquabord. The surface is more absorbent in order to use water media more easily.



Since we were supposed to paint a series, I started with 1 pear and added on. I had a hard time thinking of a subject. We had a bowl of beautiful pears on the table so I started with those.



After I painted the watercolors, I looked at them for a few days. They were OK, but not really thrilling me. Did I want to hang them on my wall? I felt they were a little bit boring.



At the same time, I've been reading a couple of books on mail art. Oh my goodness - Pear Mail! Get it - P-air Mail. That's it! I added postage stamps, ink stamps and imagined sending the pears off to foreign lands: Spain, France, Germany and well, San Francisco. They are finished with 2 layers of encaustic medium.



Numbers 3 and 4 were purchased by an Oregon Society of Artist member before the show even opened! The other two are listed for $20 each.

Oregon Society of Artists Small Treasures Show

"The Road to Starbucks" Numbers 2, 1 and 4

I dropped off my art for the OSA Small Treasures show yesterday. They'll have over 150 sets of four 6 in by 6 in paintings in every media. The show runs October 31st through December 3rd, 2010. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 1 - 4 pm, closed on Monday. I'll be "sitting" as an attendee on Saturday, November 20.

Here's number 3 of my abstract encaustic series, titled "The Road to Starbucks:"


I'm sorry about the poor photographs. I just shoot and go. The real colors are not as strong nor as dull as they might appear online. These have embroidery thread, Pearl-ex sparkle powder and seed beads mixed in with the encaustic paint. The title is derived from the fact that "Starry Night" was already taken (smile.) Actually, they are intended as abstracts and were painted rotated 90 degrees to the right. They obviously can be turned in any direction one likes. Listed for $20 each.

Portland Open Studios - Weekend 2

We enjoyed visiting the Open Studios during the second weekend.
Chuck Sites' work is beautiful and technically striking. He uses encaustic on tempered glass and aluminum. http://www.chucksitesstudios.com/

I stopped by Bridget Benton's studio and finally bought a few pieces. An encaustic work, a printed piece and a photograph of a set of encaustic tiles. I'm really enjoying having them around. http://eyesaflame.blogspot.com/

Both of these artists will be influencing my work for a while. It's unavoidable.

Portland Open Studios - Weekend 1

I managed to make it to one studio this weekend. Kevin Noonan (see a link to his Flickr set on the sidebar.) works out of a studio on SE Division. He has some lovely large size encaustic portraits - large brushstrokes of color. He also has a great collection of large oil paintings of icons (Lincoln, Nixon, etc.) and pop art.

There are still two days left: October 16 and 17. Here's the website: portlandopenstudios.com

We had family in town this weekend, but I hope to see more next weekend. Bob even promised to go with me!

What did we end up with?

"Transformation", 6 in x 6 in, Encaustic, Pen and Silk on wood.

I used a cheese slicer to scrape off some of the top layers of wax. That's a fun tool to use!

This is the style:


So, anyway, my plans are not working out very well. I cancelled my "show" - I hesitated to start on the larger works and now my regular work has gotten very busy.

I don't have much energy due to health issues. I read a lot about artists who push through no matter what - work into the night if they have to, so on and so forth. I admire that, but I really only have so much energy. I have a lot of bills to pay and weight to lose. I can't let that stuff slip much more or we will be in trouble.

Art is still interesting to me, but I'm cutting back on some of the projects I want to do. I'm going to keep trying to get a workable schedule figured out so there is some time for it.

Work in progress

I made this little piece (6' x 6' x .5") using wax encaustic, pigment and drawing on silk habotai. I really kind of liked it. It has some depth and interesting color combinations. I call it "Transformation."

THEN, as I looked at it, I thought perhaps I should add some texture and bronze oil stick on top for more depth! and some shimmer! I had just read this article: http://lynettehaggard.blogspot.com/2010/08/jeffrey-hirst-minneapolis-artist.html

The artist Jeffrey Hirst talks about pushing his work to the edge and maybe past it in order to improve. I would assume he then fixes it!

Here's "Transformation" part 2. The underlying colors haven't changed - it's just difficult to photograph encaustic and adding the top layer changes the look.

Hmm - I'm not sure I like pushing the work. Now I have to decide if I like this at all, and if I don't, can I scrape off the last layer without disturbing everything underneath? Decisions, decisions. Ugh. Well, next I need to gesso (using an absorbent gesso) the four 24" x 24" cradled boards I'll be using for the rust wall in the October exhibit. Sixteen times the excitement and opportunity to mess it up.

I know - courage!

Honorable Mention!

Today Bob and I left our house at 5 pm to go to the Lake Oswego Art Show - and we finally made it to George Rogers park at 6:50 pm. There was a traffic backup on Highway 43, so everything just crawled. We heard the last two songs of Lenny Rancher's band (he was in my class in high school) and wolfed down dinner. We went to a vendor booth and I picked up a birthday gift from an artist for a friend who admired her work two years ago. Then we rushed up the hill to the Art Center to attend a panel talk on "Why Wax?" which showed the work of 4 encaustic artists. We just had time to see the juried Encaustic show before they turned out the lights. Finally, we scurried over to the big tent for the Open Show and ran around looking for my art pieces.

Guess what?! "Begin Anywhere" won an Honorable Mention and it sold! I think it was Honorable Mention - the ribbon was yellow. As we were being kicked out of the tent, we found "Cabbage #1" which is still available.

"Begin Anywhere"

(Remember encaustic works often look better in person. *grin*)

How exciting is that? I have no idea who decides on the awards - perhaps I'll find out this weekend. I'm really happy. I'm looking forward to going back this weekend and spending some time actually looking at all the work there.

Encaustic Works for 2010 Lake Oswego Festival of Arts

Here are my two pieces for the Lake Oswego Festival of Arts show taking place June 25-June 27, 2010 in Lake Oswego, Oregon. Website is here.

"Cabbage #1"

"Begin Anywhere"

The right third of the painting turned out quite differently than I had imagined. I originally put down various colors of dots, then layered with more colors. When I scraped back, they did not please me. I added more color and stripes and that did not work either. I left it for a week and realized I wasn't getting the industrial abstract look I wanted. I added organic elements in the form of pen and pastel on mulberry rice paper fused to the picture with clear encaustic medium.

I had also planned to do a whimsical 3D work called "View from my (pretend) Beach house." That one will have to wait.

At first, I had a great time working on the pictures for the show. Then I hit the wall when I realized they just weren't what I had pictured in my mind. I spend an awful lot of time thinking and reading about art, but not that much time actually creating art.

I had to remind myself of the quote from Martha Beck that I wrote about here. Basically, it says if you want to be good at something, you need to do the work. I really haven't done that much encaustic painting since last year's show. I've taken a couple of life drawing classes and sketch on a regular basis, but I haven't produced any full size paintings. So, remember, to get better, keep doing!

Finally, the stars align...

I managed to clean up my basement studio space enough to actually start working on some projects, I'm caught up with work enough (sorta) to take a weekend off, it's beautiful out and the show deadline is next Sunday. In addition to planting flowers and visiting the Farmer's Market, I worked on some encaustic panels.


Here's a panel that has been painted on the sides and taped. Then I fuse a couple layers of encaustic layers to the surface.



I added alizarin red, titanium white and dots in R&F Cadmium Green Light, R&F Bronze, red.




To the red, I added a layer of bronze, then a layer of R&F King's Blue encaustic paint. I plan on scraping back the blue. In the center stripe, I used a paper towel to dab on shellac and 3 colors of Jacquard's Pearl-Ex powdered pigment, then lit it on fire. (Fire, fire, fire! - Too much fun.) Actually, I didn't put enough shellac on at first - it seemed to need a layer instead of drops.




This is the begnning of a big cabbage. I really love the look of a nice cabbage.



Hmm - what will these turn out to be? Bob promised to put them together for me. More later!

I sold an art piece!

"Arranging a Sunny Day" was sold, and as far as I know, it was not purchased by a relative or friend. Now, Bob's annoyed because he wanted it! Oh well.

Here's an iPhone photo of Bob looking at the piece at the show. We were not actually allowed to take photos, so I covered up the other work. However, there was plenty of great work to enjoy. It was a lot of fun to participate.

Tuesday night I'm taking a Mixing Your Own Encaustic Medium & Paint class from Linda Womack. I'm very excited to play with the pigments. Not to worry - we are wearing respirators!

Otherwise, I've been doing lots of painting exercises, but I don't really have any finished pictures at the moment.

Submitted!

Bob went with me to make sure I didn't change my mind at the last minute!
Here's the line.



Here's Bob with my dinky art pieces. There was one man with a canvas that had to be 8 feet by 6 feet.


The show starts on Friday!

Perhaps now I should get back to my regular, income producing work. It would be nice to make the July mortgage payment!

Final pieces for the art show

My pieces are polished and packed up, ready to be submitted to the Lake Oswego Art Festival Open Show tomorrow.


"My Blue Ocean" - Final. I removed some of the sea foam - it was obscuring the ocean blues.

"Arranging a Sunny Day" - 12x12 bulletin board with 9 4x4 tiles. These are all Aquabord with water color and water color pencil and colored markers. I topped them with 2 layers of clear encaustic medium.

Magnets were glued on the back. Most of the tiles can be arranged in any orientation and in any position on the board. I thought this would be fun because it would give you an excuse to touch the encaustic finish. A soft cloth will remove fingerprints and smudges.

Close-ups of a few of the tiles.

Encaustic works in progress

The Lake Oswego Art Festival takes place June 26 - June 28, 2009. They have an Open Show that is, well, open to anyone who wants to enter. There is a small fee of $25 per three pieces, the items have to be for sale, and the festival keeps 40% of the sale price.

I set a goal to have something ready for the show this year as a challenge to myself. It's a way to get started interacting with other artists, learn about art shows, learn about readying a piece of art (hanging, framing, matting correctly), and see how my works compare.

The submission date is June 21. Here are two of the pieces I'm working on:



"Vaux Swifts at Chapman" - 12x12 on birch board, encaustic with tissue paper transfers, in progress.


"Vaux Swifts at Chapman" - completed in a frame. Sorry about the parallax in the photo.



"My Blue Ocean" - 11x14 on Aquabord with water color and 2 coats of clear encaustic medium (beeswax and damar resin), in progress.



"My Blue Ocean" - still in progress. I added encaustic paint and ground glass for the sand. This is on a 2 inch cradled board, so I'm collaging the edges. I'll show that when I post the finished piece.

I have one more to display. It's called "Arranging a Sunny Day."