Recently I was able to spend a couple weeks in New Mexico culminating in taking Paula Roland's Advanced Encaustic Monotype workshop. What a wonderful experience! Paula is a fabulous teacher and was ably assisted by Hylla Evans. Hylla's deep knowledge of color and paint-making added a great deal. The other participants in the class brought interesting ideas and work to share making for a tremendous, immersive art retreat with lots of interesting discussion of technique, materials and approach to art-making.
I have been fighting with being blocked for months after completing a large body of work for a solo show. Best possible cure: surround yourself with other artists and wonderful teachers, bringing focus and clarity while exploring new ways to use a medium I've worked in for many years.
Below are a few of the pieces created in that week in Santa Fe. They clearly continue to build on the aerial landscape theme I've worked with for years. My interest in the form and meaning of landscape and waterways continues. I'm working to combine my formal interests in painterly abstraction of landscape from on high with my concerns about climate change and how human intervention in the environment puts us all at risk.
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big river bend, encaustic monotype on hosho
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blue arcs, encaustic on kozo
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river branches I, digital print & encaustic monotype on Rives BFK
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river branches II, digital print & encaustic monotype on Rives BFK
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river branches III, digital print & encaustic monotype on Rives BFK
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| river and inset river, monotype and graphite transfer on Shikoku paper |
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| green figures, rust ground, encaustic monotype on kozo |
Jean and I also met Jean Arnold. Her recent paintings of strip mines painted from an aerial viewpoint are raw and political in tone - powerful and inspiring work.
