OPUS VII presents a solo exhibition of Jenny Gray’s new work for the month of March. Her latest series of architecturally inspired paintings is entitled “Structure.”
Category Archives: Art
Ingrid Bathe
Ingrid Bathe in her Studio
About Ingrid Bathe: I live and work in mid-coast Maine. My studio is 25 feet from my house. Production has slowed a bit since December 2009, when my daughter was born but I continue to make work in the evenings as well as the weekends. I grew up in the Boston area and the lifestyle I maintain in Maine is conducive to my art making. Edgecomb is a small town with no city center just a town hall. We are surrounded by farmed fields and preserved natural areas. My home was previously owned by an avid perennial gardener. We have fruit trees and a vegetable garden as well as eight chickens. The tempo of the long quiet winters and the radiant quick moving summers creates a balance that complements my temperament.
Ingrid Bathe on her process: Thoughtfulness is evident in the way I handle clay and necessary when viewing or handling my work. The methods I employ when constructing my work are integral to the final presentation. The repetitive nature of pinching and coiling, allow for meditation during creation. I skillfully employ basic, traditional methods of hand building to emphasize the scope of possibility within the medium. By making objects out of a fragile and precious material, I expect the delicate nature of the work to provoke a heightened awareness and sensitivity on the part of the viewer. By paying attention to and finding beauty in simple acts, I ask the viewer to reconsider the role and function of these activities and objects as I beautify and memorialize them as artwork.
Gallery at a Glance – Eugene Magazine
OPUS VII opened its doors to the public in the fall of 2010. A new exhibition is introduced every month, in conjunction with the gallery’s existing artwork. Continue reading
Kim Murton, Sculpture and Ceramics
Kim Murton has been making sculpture and functional ceramics in her home in Vancouver, WA for nearly two decades, working mostly with low-fire terracotta clay and colored slips. Continue reading
Jerry Dame, Sr., Painter
Jerry Dame was born in Amarillo, Texas in 1944. Grew up in Southern California. Has had an interest in art as long as he can remember. Jerry began painting in his teens. His early work focused on oil paintings of the ocean, surfers and antique cars as well as watercolor landscapes. Continue reading
Terry McIlrath, Painter
I was born in Michigan during World War II and I am the youngest of three boys. My favorite childhood drawings included everything from birds to the latest cars in Detroit. Continue reading
Heartwood Carving
Joe Valasek of Heartwood Carving
Heartwood Carving designs and creates quality ornamental carvings and architectural details of lasting beauty and value. Architectural carvings shape a home’s interior landscape and to that end we offer a unique line of carved components and ready-to-assemble trim kits for creating decorative casework, mantels, cabinetry accents and furniture, and detailing architectural features like staircases, built-ins, and columns. Continue reading
Lori Mason Quilts
My passion for quilting is about people—the evocative stories told by quilts and the personal relationships pieced through the fabric. I cherish these connections as well as the beauty that emerges through the patterns in the cloth. I aim to create a visual space in which people feel a sense of peace and a tactile form under which people can be comforted. Continue reading
Sarah Hood – Arbor Collection
My Arbor collection highlights the stark silhouette of nearly bare sterling silver and 24k gold trees. Each piece is ultimately wearable, but still covetable and collectible, the perfect combination. These pieces speak to my love of the natural but somehow grow beyond that, entering a new realm of almost fairytale-like beauty. The collection is accessible but still somewhat mysterious at the same time.
Steve Eichenberger Crows
Since boyhood I’ve explored far flung corners of the Pacific Northwest, and wherever I’ve gone I’ve enjoyed the company of crows and ravens. My favorites are the big handsome ones that strut self-importantly about, full of bright-eyed curiosity. They look right back at me looking at them—a look I’ve attempted to capture in this series.
I sculpted the originals in clay, from which I made molds to cast this collection. Each piece is individually hand cast, burnished, and signed.
I hope you enjoy them.
Meet Your Maker Interview with Jenny Gray
Jenny Gray is an oil painter that has sold work at a couple Meet Your Maker shows. You can find her online here.
Barbara Campbell
“My style and form have emerged from years of exploration and experimentation. I am inspired by the beauty of Oregon’s abundant flowers and find myself making many vessels to hold them.”
Barb Campbell is a predominantly self-taught artist with a degree in anthropology from Oregon State University. Now, in the middle of her career, she has been inspired by the art community of Oaxaca, Mexico to expand her practice to include collaborative art making. Campbell’s teaching credits include teaching hand-building techniques as a Visiting Artist at the University of Oregon and at Juniata College in Huntington, Pennsylvania. Her pottery is expressive and functional as a means to enhance every day life.
Barb Campbell has exhibited her work throughout the Northwest.
David Campbell
David Campbell
I have been an inveterate drawer from the beginnings of my time…
Thanks to my parents I was encouraged to do this.
I have had further encouragement from three teachers:
Clarence Bates, my high-school art teacher;
Elden Humphrey, the Corvallis sign painter, for whom I worked as an apprentice while in high school;
Max Nixon, mentor and colleague at the U of O, who first gave me the idea to stop avoiding being a painter.
I am also thankful to my employer through most of 25 years, John Brombaugh, for giving me the opportunity to design and carve ornaments for the pipe organs that he designed and I helped build in his Glenwood shop.
My goal from now on is to continue this curtailment of avoidance of painting and in doing so produce something of value and high quality.
Sidonie Caron
Sidonie Caron
“As you look through the different bodies of work displayed here you will see that I am an eclectic painter. I respond to life’s influences, my travels and my environment by making work that reflects all this.
Materials and paint have always interested me and my curiosity has always impelled me not only to try new things but also to tackle new subject matter.
Sometimes this has been triggered by commissions, both public and private, that have encouraged me to continue with a theme, but also sometimes a prolonged involvement in a particular theme has been the impetus to then paint something completely different.”
Sidonie was recently featured on Oregon Art Beat, a service of OPB.
Pat Condron
Thirty years ago I started on my artistic path by enrolling in bookbinding and calligraphy classes. These early endeavors gave me a solid foundation in craftsmanship and design. Over the years as a professional artist I have explored paper marbling, silkscreening, graphic design, paper making, and collage. Although I still enjoy the craftwork, currently my creative focus is on painting. Through the use of color, composition and movement, I strive to paint mood and emotion. I delight in the spontaneous. Art happens.
Laura Cooke
Laura Cooke in her studio
Laura grew up in North Carolina and received her Bachelor’s Degree in Studio Art from Furman University. She learned to throw pottery in the hilltop town of Cortona, Italy and fell in love with it while living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. While hiking through the fog to Machu Picchu, she decided to pursue pottery and moved to Portland, Oregon to study in the ceramics program at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. She now lives in Portland where she works full time in her studio. She loves clean and simple design and intends her pottery for everyday use.
All of Laura’s pieces are dishwasher and microwave safe.
Jerry Dame, Sr.
Jerry Dame, Sr.
To lift the spirit, encourage the soul, to give joy to life, is as much the responsibility of the oil painter as it is the doctor or preacher.
Color, mood, subtle message, or vibrant declarations are the instruments in the oil painter’s medicine bag.
The oil painter’s responsibility, then, is to use these instruments with understanding and skill for the blessing of the viewer. Continue reading
Marcio Diaz
Marcio Diaz
“In the brush strokes of a painter, lies the history of his people” – Marcio Díaz
I was born in Murra, a small farming town in northern Nicaragua. I loved my home, but soon realized that my talent lay not in working the land, but in painting. Eager to develop my skill, I left the countryside in 1994 to enroll at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Managua. I gradually widened the focus of my education and graduated with a BA in architecture paying my way through college by teaching painting and art history. Although I worked as an architect for several years, eventually my love for the act of creation led me to return to my painting. Now I devote myself exclusively to that.
Growing up in a rural environment gave me a special awareness for the intensity and variety of colors I found around me. As a result, all the colors I paint with can be found on Nature’s spectrum, whether it’s the blazing red of an Amapola flower, the iridescent sheen of the Guardabarranco’s feathers, or the ecstatic rainbow of a folkloric dress. At harvest time, the fields and forests of my homeland are saturated with all the hues of imagination; these are just a few of the memories that inspire my palette . . .
As you can see, I am passionate about using rich and vibrant colors in my paintings. Some painters start with a sketch, but when I begin a piece, I rush a gamut of pigments directly onto the empty canvas. (Only when I see a canvas with something already happening on it can I sketch in a background.) Next I apply successive layers of color to the drawing by dipping my brush into the paint and letting drip onto the canvas. Using a special technique, I heat the canvas and then—when the pigments are almost dry—I wipe it down. To finish the piece, I add a neutral color that acts as a perceptual net linking one spot of color to another, followed by many smaller circles of color to reinforce and harmonize the whole composition. I know I am done painting when I can look at a piece and relive my feelings coursing through each brush stroke.
Spirituality bubbles up from my canvasses, swirls around, then melts back into the scenery. Children can sense this. In fact, the first time I exhibited this technique in public, children were especially taken with it. They spontaneously started calling it “bubble painting.” So, following their lead, I decided to call my style bubblism.
I am constantly studying art around the world and adapting what I like most to my own style. Currently, I am developing my vision of the bubble technique as a new concept within contemporary art, but my dream for the long-term future is to build and fund an art school for underprivileged young artists in my hometown in Nicaragua.
Ellen Dittebrandt
Ellen Dittebrandt
I have been drawing and painting since I was big enough to hold a pencil. My first pictures were sold when I was ten years old. Drawing has been my way to communicate what I see and feel.
I study a scene, imagining how to draw it effectively. How does one draw a moving wave to make it look real? How can I show the color and reflections on water?
The play of light is fascinating. Light dances across the land, reflecting and changing all the time; changing from light to dark, changing colors in shadows. There’s evening light with its golden colors and the pure light of morning. Water and snow each affect light in their own special ways.
I discovered pastels in high school, learning to use them by trial and error. I enjoy pastels because they are so much like oils. I studied art for two and a half years at Pacific Northwest College of Art. For the last five years, I’ve been painting a portrait of Oregon, and have traveled all over the state finding new places to record.
The immense variety in nature excites my artistic response. My work includes many examples of the way lights and shapes intertwine. A landscape provides endless opportunities for lifting shapes and colors in interesting detail. Each section of the drawing has its own life, but together they make a landscape.
Some of my favorite artists are Claude Monet, Maxfield Parrish, Frank Benson, N. C. Wyeth, Georges Noyes, John Singer Sargent and modern painter Michael Fergus. I admire the way these artists handle color and technique.
Steve Eichenberger
Since boyhood I’ve explored far flung corners of the Pacific Northwest, and wherever I’ve gone I’ve enjoyed the company of crows and ravens. My favorites are the big handsome ones that strut self-importantly about, full of bright-eyed curiosity. They look right back at me looking at them—a look I’ve attempted to capture in this series.
I sculpted the originals in clay, from which I made molds to cast this collection. Each piece is individually hand cast, burnished, and signed.
I hope you enjoy them.
Paul Gentry
Paul Gentry in his studio
As an artist, wood block printmaking is my passion. I enjoy the physical nature of cutting a design into a block of wood and the power and clarity of the final printed image. It’s always a thrill to pull a sparkling impression from a freshly inked block. There are two basic ways to make prints from wood blocks. Woodcuts are made by cutting a design on the face of a board, parallel to the wood grain, using conventional carving tools such as knives and gouges. Wood Engravings are made on blocks fabricated from end-grain hardwood, using engraving tools (burins and gravers) which produce much finer marks. I continue to work with both techniques, following a tradition of realistic printmaking that was popular in America during the 1930’s and early 40’s, the so called “Regionlist” or “American Scene” period. I am inspired by the classical vision and draftsmanship of these artists.
Chris Giffin
It is in my nature to seek the unusual and find amusement in the discarded. I am seduced by the forms and surfaces of found objects. They enchant me with their elusive histories and the memories they induce.
In my voice I claim responsibility to communicate my aesthetics, to give my life balance among discarded and displaced materials, to take measure and find order, and in the end, the mysterious beauty of an object may be recycled again and again…
Process Statement:
All of my one of a kind work is constructed from recycled materials and found objects. I use a cold construction method, assembling all my pieces with nuts and bolts, wire, nails, etc.
The ingredients in each piece I make are chosen for their beauty, mystery or whimsical spirit. The patina and aging of these parts is essentially the palette I have to work with. The stories in these old found objects come together to form a new community in each piece of work and a new story is told.
Chris was recently featured on Oregon Art Beat, a service of OPB.
Hannah Goldrich
The hallmark of Hannah’s style is that she creates jewelry that is comfortable to wear yet beautiful to hold in one’s hand and admire as a small sculptural piece. The one of a kind pieces represent her most creative side. Inspired by a special stone or personal memory, this jewelry speaks volumes about her convictions, her environment and her life.
Her production pieces represent the practical side of her, the sterling hoops and myriad of earrings executed in precious metals and the strands of pearls of every shape and color, connected with her signature clasp.
Jenny Gray
Jenny Gray
I often abstract known subjects such as landscapes, machinery and graphic images—exploring ideas and emotions with paint rather than rendering the subjects specifically. I start with a sketch but the painting quickly becomes about emotion, paint, freedom, line, composition and layers. Continue reading
John and Robin Gumaelius
For Robin and John Gumaelius, radio stories, history books, biking adventures, gardening notes, watching neighbors and strangers, parks, and cars are what inspire their unique ceramic and metal pieces. Robin and John’s sculptures are unusual combinations of birds and humans: bird heads or people with birds perched on their heads and other creatures with people heads. Their works are comical, bizarre and highly inventive. They are technically laudable because of their intricacy of forms, often monumental sizes, and complex decorative glazes. The finished pieces come alive as if Robin and John as if subliminally created. There seems to be a little magic in each piece.
Robin and John Gumaelius work together building their birds and figures with a fluid connection between clay and metal, beginning with clay slabs. When the pieces are leather hard, they paint with underglazes and then carve through the painted surface, into the white clay.
Sarah Hood
Sarah Hood
Sarah Hood Jewelry features several collections of unique jewelry pieces ranging from very wearable limited edition jewelry to one-of-a-kind sculptural art jewelry. Her work is a constant exploration of the natural world, both its forms and its materials. She says, “I’m drawn to archetypes, those images floating beneath our collective consciousness–a perfect circle, a smooth and elongated leaf, a bud, a bare tree. I love clean shapes, elegant design, and unexpected combinations of materials.”
Jacquline Hurlbert
It’s crazy out there. So I retreat to my inside world. The one where I can breathe and calm myself. Clay serves as the vehicles for my meditation; it speaks without words. Everything that I feel is automatically transferred to the clay through my hands. This is my voice, not heard but seen. I invite you to communicate with me through visual imagery, creating a dialogue between yourself and the work.
Oversized feet symbolize the strength to stand alone in the face of opposition. An admirable concept to believe in but not always an easy one to live by. I’m not just talking about the “big” issues of the day either, I’m talking about the decisions we make on a daily basis that define who we are and what we believe in.
The figures with outstretched, exaggerated hands beckon you to step inside yourself. The hands are presenting and offering, a gift of personal insight.
Many of the figures are in costume; this reflects my ongoing investigation of the many personalities and attitudes that reside inside each one of us. I’m not the same person I was yesterday . . . and yet I am. I am changed by each new experience but yet the essence of who I am remains. I enjoy playing this game of cat and mouse with myself.
The clay speaks and I listen, this body of work is the result of that silent conversation.
Rogene Manas
Rogene Manas
“As co-owner of an international card company, a designer and illustrator for more than 35. I retired from my business (PhotoTidings.com) to pursue my love of art making in 2006. After majoring in art at the University of Oregon, I expanded my skills by studying with numerous professional artists in the Pacific Northwest, Mexico, Italy and France. I became known for my plein-air landscape painting and impressionistic still life work, but I made a sudden departure in style after spending winters in Mexico and becoming enamored with the allegorical nature of Latin American folk art. My work has shown at Maude Kerns Art Center, Kudos Gallery, Jacob’s Gallery, Opus S6ix and Passionflower in Eugene, at Onda Gallery and Guardino Gallery in Portland, and at the Haystack Gallery in Cannon Beach, Oregon.
Much of my work comments on the relationship between humans and nature. Inside, we are all the same, sharing identical molecules with every life form on the planet and beyond. We are all intrinsically connected and when one is hurt, we all suffer. Combining plant, bird, and insect imagery with figurative elements in a slightly surrealistic fashion, I explore and illuminate the essence that links us together. Drawing from my imagination and my love of nature, my compositions are both organic and graphic. My background in design as well as my Spanish/Italian heritage definitely influence my style. I love the freedom of making art with mixed media. I create sculptural bas-reliefs and textural painting using paper mache, collage materials and acrylic paint.”
Rogene was recently featured on Oregon Art Beat, a service of OPB.
Lori Mason
Lori Mason
As a textile designer and quilt artist, Lori Mason has been producing artwork for over 15 years. She comes from a multi-generational family of artists and architects, and began her career in textiles at age 10 when she discovered the simple joy of hemming her own jeans. Continue reading
Kicki Masthem
Kicki Masthem
The figurative work here explores my interest in gesture as a means of expression. I set out to simply let everyday actions inform my work: people trying to create a personal space while waiting in line or edging forward to listen in on a conversation. The anonymity of these androgynous figures keeps the focus on the expressive form of the gesture.
Having traveled and lived in various countries, I am intrigued at how differently personal space is viewed across cultures and how people use their bodies to communicate. Placement of the clay figures becomes an important formal element in this work; elevating the figures onto a plinth creates a personal space that sets the figures apart from their surroundings, while placing the figures onto a plane (the wall) creates a dialogue with the surface and a group dynamic as the figures engage one another in an ambiguous narrative.
Themes from my earlier series – using drawers and hinges to address issues of fitting and potential for movement and change – take on a different meaning in this new work in which I combine elements of the human form with furnituresque parts in unlikely situational gestures.
I find intriguing how we draw from our own personal experiences and backgrounds to view and interpret this work so differently.
Terry McIlrath
Mixed Media artist Terry McIlrath
I am fascinated by the creative process and I love to explore every avenue of artistic expression. My greatest passion is drawing followed closely by the use of texture and color. I find our world a humorous little corner of a perfect Universe.
I believe artists are guardians of the human spirit. We are responsible for preserving truth, love and beauty and our work is to defend freedom, build community and spread joy. It is the job of the artist to maintain a connection with people everywhere through written, visual and performing arts.
Whether it is a small poem , a symphony or a drawing, it serves as another piece in the tapestry of human history that is held together with the threads of the human spirit.
Peter Miller
Peter Miller
My landscapes find me on the streets of the city, I started out thinking that I found them but came to realize that the opposite is true – I know that I am not the first to come to this realization, but I came to it directly. It’s a very personal process, but trusting that the images will find me means that I don’t have to worry about being unique or clever. Don’t have to worry about inspiration. Just keep walking and seeing. Trusting. And in the digital darkroom, I get to create with gifts my camera has recorded. Trusting my tools and my instincts. Trusting the freedom to create….
Shane Miller
Shane Miller
From my studio in Port Townsend, I create jewelry using a photo-etching technique. For the last 12 years I have been a sculptor and printmaker.
Jewelry, for me, is the offspring of these two art forms. Each piece feels like a small sculpture and the etched surface is a direct product of printmaking. I am also drawn to words and narrative and a good story.
While choosing imagery for a piece of jewelry, I have the privilege of beginning a story that the wearer gets to finish. My jewelry might not be considered precious due to a lack of gems and gold but when a favorite piece is found at the back of the sock drawer three years lost, my hope is that the finder will feel as though they have discovered a treasure.
The technique:
A light sensitive plate of silver or copper is exposed to ultraviolet light passing through a transparency. Where the light passes through and exposes the plate, the emulsion hardens and where the light is blocked the emulsion remains soft.
The plate is developed in a soda ash solution which removes the unexposed emulsion. The emulsion that remains on the plate becomes the resist when it is placed in acid thus creating the etched image.
Anne Teigen
Anne Teigen in her studio
“Mozart said the reason he spent so many hours each day at the piano was if the muse came he wanted to be there. Me too! That’s why I work every day. I don’t wait to be in the mood.”
Ellen Tykeson
Ellen Tykeson
Eugene artist, Ellen Tykeson, finds the tradition of figurative sculpture a continual challenge & inspiration. Solid design and form making, a sense of narrative, & beauty with a degree of accuracy, are things she appreciates in art & strives to describe in her work. Continue reading
Ruth von Buren
When silversmith Ruth Von Büren enrolled in her first metalwork classes at the Rochester Institute of Technology after coming to the U.S., she hardly spoke any English. It turned out not to matter because neither did the teacher. “A famous silversmith from Denmark was the teacher,” she says. “Since he couldn’t speak much English, he’d show us how to do something, and then we’d try to do the same.”
Von Büren moved to Rochester from her native Switzerland in 1964 when her husband began teaching at the University of Rochester. “If I’d stayed in Switzerland, I’d not have had the opportunity to learn jewelry-making once I left school because the educational system is different there,” she says. “I did do some craft things before I moved here such as work in a jewelry store, but I didn’t make things.”
After completing the coursework at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Von Büren opened a studio where she specialized in jewelry and small sculptures, made the rounds of craft fairs to begin selling her pieces and taught silversmithing.
Today, the 84-year-old works out of a studio at her home in Eugene, Ore., where she and her husband moved after he retired.
Von Büren, who makes intricate, contemporary brooches, cuffs, pendants and bracelets set with stones and gems, rarely begins a project with a firm idea of how it will end up. “I go into my studio and sit down,” she says. “I don’t draw or anything. I just begin working and after a while the design comes. I prefer working with my hands to most other activities.”
Caroline Viene
Caroline Viene
I am currently exploring patination, surface texturing and patterning on various metal surfaces. My intention is to build on metal surfacing techniques such as reticulation, fusing, embossing and roller printing to achieve a visual richness with the definition. The color is achieved with Japanese patinas and the incorporation of stones I choose to compliment the surface treatments. The finished pieces are like small paintings and/or sculptures that can be worn.
I have worked as an independent metalsmith for most of my professional career. I have participated in solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the United States. My clientele has included many celebrities and famous individuals.
I hold a BA in Design from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree in the MPA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Sandy Visse
Sandy Visse
Most of Sandy Visse’s work is figurative and whimsical in nature expressing her love of animals and folk art. She makes one of a kind ceramic sculptures with a thrown base or multiple forms that are then altered and individualized through hand building. She uses several different clays and firing processes to achieve a desired end result. Although Sandy is self-taught, she gains inspiration and knowledge from different art or ceramic classes or workshops that she occasionally attends. She has been a member of the Oregon Potter’s Association for many years and exhibited her work in galleries in the Pacific Coast States as well as Idaho and Arizona.
Jeff White
Within nature there are forceful, intelligent elements that coexist beside and in spite of humanity. They can not be reasoned with or controlled and have always survived and outlived mankind. Mystically, they often mirror man’s own walk through life.
Throughout life’s spiritual journey, we encounter rivers, valleys, shadows, daybreaks, storms and beautiful clearings. We face horizons that move us from a calm serenity through turbulent storms only to return back to a peaceful state with a deeper understanding of ourselves.
My paintings reflect these moments as expressed by nature. I attempt to convey a resonance of the paradoxical relationship between the external and internal forces. My work represents a spiritual journey and the balance found in the harmonies I see between the environment and man as a voyeur passing through time. Using oil and pastels, I focus on capturing the colors, shapes and moods of the land and the sky. I use thin glazes and layers of transparent pigments to emulate the atmospheric conditions that exist in the natural world. Much of my inspiration comes from the Columbia Gorge and the Northwest coastal regions, mountains and rivers.
Jeff was featured on Oregon Art Beat, a service of OPB
Greg Wilbur
Greg Wilbur
Raising is an ancient metalsmithing process that stretches malleable metal into striking contours. Using forged steel hammers, open and closed forms are created from sheets of bronze, brass, copper and silver. Physically demanding, this process requires hundreds, often thousands of repetitive blows, producing a modest amount of work from a single artist.
Betsy Wolfston
Betsy Wolfston in her studio
Betsy Wolfston is a ceramic artist who incorporates her respect for the functionality of pottery into non-traditional ceramic creations that speak of human feelings and of ageless wisdom.
Betsy’s wide intellectual interests, political sensitivities and extensive travel infuse both her public and gallery art with natural beauty and critical awareness.
Betsy says, “When I am creating a body of work for a gallery show, I want to combine the ageless quality and beauty of clay with contemporary ideas and issues.”
Linda Womack
Linda Womack in her studio
The fragility of life has long been a recurring theme in my work; exploring how we grow, develop and cease to exist in our current forms and what evidence remains of our existence when we are gone.
Influenced by my childhood in Hawai’i, my paintings incorporate abstractions of nature and how they alter the world around us with the passage of time. Images of the bits you might flick off your coast or crunch beneath your shoes symbolize the humanity both transforming and being transformed by natural processes. Searching for pockets of meaning in the chaos, I freeze these moments where the past, present and future are suspended as if between sleep and waking – that fleeting instant where anything is possible.
My work pairs modern materials with the ancient technique of encaustic painting, where beeswax, resin and pigment are layered to produce a luminous surface of that captures and reflects light. The translucency of the wax creates layers of information, like the sediment of time, while stirring the senses of sight, smell, and touch.
Artist Biography
Embracing Encaustic
Linda Womack is a nationally recognized artist, art instructor and the author of Embracing Encaustic: Learning to Paint with Beeswax. In 2010 she was the curator for Luminous Layers: Exploring Contemporary Encaustic, a wide ranging exhibit in Oregon featuring 65 artists and more than 160 pieces of art. Linda is often a featured speaker and instructor at the National Encaustic Conference and her work has been published in American Art Collector and Encaustic with a Textile Sensibility.
