I created this painting as a demonstration piece for a workshop I am offering called Wax Over Water: Creating luminous landscapes with encaustics, oils and beeswax.

The distant area that gives a sense of an island in the reservoir is done in watercolors over which I applied multiple layers of encaustic medium – unpigmented, molten beeswax with damar resin. Next, I used chromatic blacks to give a sense of the silhouetted trees. Next I scratched and incised into the wax with a sharp knife and razor blades. The final layers are done with translucent oils mixed with beeswax, resulting in a piece that glows and feels almost like a stained glass window.

#encaustic #reservoir #landscape #tiffany #stainedglass #watercolor #oilpainting #mixedmedia #silhouette

I’m very pleased to announce that I am among the faculty of 26 international encaustic artists who will be teaching virtual workshops over the course of the next year, starting on April 30, 2021.

The series is offered by through the Essence of Mulranny Art School in Ireland.

Participants purchase the whole course and can then access each of the sessions by all 26 artists at any time, even after the end of the year (once each session has been added to the site.) Workshops begin April 30, 2021.

Here is the link to the Painting with Fire Yearlong Course Info and Registration site.

I feel most honored to be in such amazing company!

I just completed this piece, which had reached several earlier points at which it seemed complete. While there were aspects of the earlier versions that I was quite pleased with, something kept calling me back. A kind of restless feeling of non-resolution, a sense that the work was not yet mysterious enough to me. So, I returned, I scraped back, I built up new layers of wax. I nearly submerged the work in darkness – layers of dark encaustic and dark oils with beeswax – and then began to excavate to allow the underlying lightness to shine through.

Some paintings just need time to ripen to the point at which they feel true. And they demand that you risk destroying work that may actually be good…

I’m very pleased to announce that I will be offering a virtual 2-part workshop, Wax Over Water: Creating luminous images with encaustics, oils and watercolors, via Zoom through the Museum of Encaustic Art/Encaustic Art Institute.

The February 6 and 13 workshop is just about full, so we decided to offer it again in March. A flyer with detailed info about the workshop and how to register is available on the EAI website at this link. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message via my Contact page.

Unexpected things happen when you are painting.

I anticipated a cooler tone when I picked up an oil pigment stick and ran it across the lower left hand corner, but there were surprising (even alarming) traces of Indian Yellow and Green Gold.

I stood back as the music of this piece at once resolved on a high note.

April fields began to green and tree buds swell, yet the almost daily spring snowstorms continued to blanket these Northern Catskill Mountains as if sensing the pandemic mood.

I created this 12 by 16 painting using encaustics and oils with beeswax over watercolor on a cradled panel. It is on display at the Rhode Island Watercolor Society’s online exhibit: It’s All About Color. Visit my Art Process page to see the evolution of this piece from watercolor to encaustic to oil to finished work.

This year, crocuses endured several April snows before fading away into the fresh spring grasses.

Fading Crocus, an 8 x 8 x 1.5 encaustic with oils and beeswax over watercolor painting will be on display this summer in the Bloom and Grow exhibit at Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Art Center in Solomons, MD.