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!

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."