R&F Handmade Paints

Introduced in 2009, our Visiting Artist Series has become one of our favorite programs here at R&F - and judging by the full rosters we see for these workshops, they’re pretty popular with artists too. We invite some of the most exciting artists working with encaustic to come to R&F and present a workshop and have an exhibition. Since many of these artists do not teach regularly, this gives students a rare opportunity to learn new techniques,  stretch their practice and see what makes other artists tick. Mark your calendars and start dreaming about which of our Visiting Artists you will want to study with in 2013!

Once registration officially opens, tuition will be $550, but from now until Thanksgiving we are offering a pre-registration special price of $500. To take advantage of this offer, just contact laura@rfpaints.com, or call (845) 331-3112, and indicate which class you are interested in. A $100 deposit is required to hold your place.

RUSSELL THURSTON | Leaving A Mark

May 22-24, 2013

Russell Thurston | Fiesta | 2012

GREGORY WRIGHT | Visual Depth

July 31 - August 2, 2013

Gregory Wright | The Truth Comes Out | 2012

HOWARD HERSH | Following the Thread: Our Road to Discovery

October 2-4, 2013

Howard Hersh | Accretion 6 | 2012

LISA KAIROS | Floating Narratives

December 4-6, 2013

Lisa Kairos | Drift Pollination | 2012

From September 8th through October 2nd, The Carroll House Gallery at Keene State College in New Hampshire hosted, New Views of Encaustic Art, featuring the work of Francisco Benitez, Kevin Frank, Leah Macdonald,  Marybeth Rothman, and yours truly, Laura Moriarty.

On September 13th, I was invited by Professor Peter Roos, who curated the exhibition, to present a lecture at the Redfern Arts Center, where I spoke about my work and presented an R&F Encaustic Demonstration for an awesome group of students who were eager to experiment with encaustic.

Thanks to Peter Roos for conceiving and organizing these events, and for promoting encaustic at the academic level, where it makes such an important difference.

There has been quite a bit of buzz lately about our Pigment Sticks.  More artists are becoming aware of what a great medium they are on their own but they are also being recognized for their unique ability to bridge different mediums.

Recently, we were fortunate to have Lisa Pressman here for the latest installment of our visiting artist series of workshops.  Lisa’s workshop, “Pigment Sticks and Mixed Media” covered a lot of ground in three days and participants generated an impressive amount of work.

The visiting artist series is a unique opportunity to experience a world class instructor/artist in R&F’s well stocked and equipped facility.

Thank you Lisa!!

Lisa and Richard

Last weeks Encaustic for Sculptors workshop taught by R&F’s Kelly McGrath was a huge hit.   Students were  introduced to many innovative 3D techniques and they produced an impressive body of work in just three days.

We are looking forward to an exciting year of mixed media and collaborative workshops as well as our tried and true comprehensive courses in in both encaustic and Pigment Stick.   Also keep an eye out for more in our series of visiting artists.    This year we are thrilled to have Lisa Pressman, Lorraine Glessner, Cat Crotchett, and Alexandre Masino here at R&F!!

Look here for more information or feel free to contact us to reserve a space!

The last of 2010’s Visiting Artist Workshops at R&F wrapped-up last week with Cari Hernandez, who came from Northern California to share some of her alternative methods of object making in a dynamic 3 day workshop.  Cari got her class all charged up!   If you missed out, or are not aware of Cari’s work take a look here.

The Visiting Artist Series is one of our favorite programs because it brings popular working artists to our studio facility to share exciting techniques with a small group of lucky students.  Be on the lookout in 2011 for another installment of this incredibly successful series.  Teaching artists on the roster include: Cat Crotchett, and Alexandre Masino, and Lorraine Glessner.

'Areol' by Nancy Graves, 1978 Oil and encaustic on canvas, 64 x 88 inches

The Gallery at R&F, in cooperation with the Nancy Graves Foundation and Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, is proud to present an exhibition of little-known encaustic and mixed media works by the late painter and sculptor, Nancy Graves. The show will run from October 2^nd through November 20^th, 2010, with an opening reception on Saturday, October 9^th, from 5 – 7 pm. Linda Konheim Kramer, Executive Director of the Nancy Graves Foundation, will speak at the opening.

Nancy Graves’s personal aesthetic emerged in the later 1960s in the form of realistic life-size sculptures of camels. These works were rooted in her childhood memories of the animals preserved by taxidermists in the Natural History section of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and in the idioms of Abstract Expressionism taught at the Yale University School of Art where she was a student in the early 1960s. The interplay between the replication of nature and the formal values of abstract art was to inform her work throughout her life.

In 1972 Graves took a break from sculpture and turned to painting. Between 1977 and 1984, she created nineteen encaustic and mixed media paintings, seven of which are featured in this exhibition, the first to focus exclusively on Graves’s use of encaustic. In her unpublished ‘Notes on Paintings’ of 1978, the artist gives a technical description that mentions encaustic as but one of several methods used to help her achieve a “depth of field through layering”, where the process could be understood as the meaning of the work. This series of vibrant works is a testament to Graves’ abiding interests in natural phenomena, geology, archaeology and cartography. Their aerial perspective suggests mysterious, colorful maps of imagined territories, which strongly relates to a series of prints that the artist completed in the early 1980’s.

'Equivalent' by Nancy Graves. 1978, Oil and Encaustic on canvas, 64 x 100 inches

Nancy Graves was born in Pittsfield, MA in 1939. While studying English literature at Vassar College, she received a fellowship in painting to the Yale-Norfolk Summer School. From 1961 to 1964 she studied fine art at Yale University, New Haven, CT, and in 1964 received a Fulbright-Hayes grant in painting to study in Paris. In 1966 she moved to New York and established a studio. Her first solo exhibition was in 1968 at the Graham Gallery, and the following year she became the first woman artist to have a solo retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1985 she received the Yale Arts Award and in 1986 Vassar acknowledged her accomplishments with an exhibition and the Vassar College Distinguished Visitor Award. Solo exhibitions of her work appeared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Fort Worth, Texas; and Aachen, Germany. In 1991 Graves married Avery Leete Smith, a veterinarian in Kingston, NY. Graves died of cancer in New York on October 21, 1995. The Nancy Graves Foundation was established in 1996 through a provision of the artist’s Last Will and Testament to give grants to individual artists and to maintain an archive of her life and work and organize exhibitions of her art.

Please join us at The Gallery at R&F for the opening reception for this impressive exhibition on Saturday, October 9th, from 5-7 pm, when Linda Konheim Kramer, Executive Director of the Nancy Graves Foundation will present a brief talk about the artist and her work.

On Saturday, November 6th, artist Cynthia Winika will present a special one-day workshop in conjunction with the exhibition for artists who have an interest in Graves’ use of Encaustic with Mixed Media.

Charles Forsberg demonstrates how Pigment Sticks are both a drawing and painting medium like no one else.

Charles frequently returns to drawing, forcefully striking marks into the heavily manipulated buttery paint, then tearing it apart, alternating in a push-pull sequence of drawing and smearing, scraping back, revealing previous drawing marks, and piling what he has scraped up into thick sculptural mounds.

It is an amazing and unceasing gestural exercise over many hours, as Forsberg turns the formless ooze he started with into a powerful structure of shapes and sharply accented marks.

Anyone attending Forsberg’s Pigment Stick workshop on August 10-12 will experience the thrill of sharing  his method of working paint with utter abandon and confident control.

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One of the great things about our visiting artist workshop program is the opportunity to acquaint other artists with unique approaches to encaustic painting.

Francisco Benitez, from Santa Fe, taught a class on encaustic portraiture June 2nd thru 4th here at R&F.  Switching from oils to encaustics a number of years ago prompted him to pursue his long time fascination with the encaustic Fayum funeral portraits of ancient Egypt and explore the techniques that produced them.

Using metal tools and heated tips that he had designed to duplicate the ancient bronze spatulas used by the Fayum painters, Francisco demonstrated how direct manipulation of the encaustic can create very controlled and at the same time rich impressionistic effects. This is largely due to the sensitive flexibility that give the tools the feel of being an extension of the fingers. These tools, by the way, are being manufactured for R&F by Sculpture House, and will be available in August.

Another feature of Francisco’s technique is the recreation of the four-color palette. Developed around the 5th century BC, the four color system, known as tetrachromy, utilizes black, white, red ochre, and yellow ochre (equivalent to mars red and yellow). When skillfully mixed, they can create a full color range that is both harmonious and elegant in its economy of color.  Following the Greek tradition of portraiture, the painting is begun on a dark ground and the layers of color progress from dark to light in a process that is like bringing the face from out of the shadows.

Compare Benitez’ method in one of his demonstration pieces below with a Fayum portrait from the 1st Century AD.

Portrait created during workshop by Francisco Benitez

Fayum Portrait, circa 100 AD

In conjunction with Francisco’s workshop he also has a solo exhibition at R&F entitled Ancient Voices through Modern Eyes: Encaustic Figurative Paintings by Francisco Benitez on view through July 24th, 2010.

There are so many questions that keep popping up about the materials that we use, where they come from, and how they are processed.  When we talk about beeswax,  terms such as Pharmaceutical grade, bleaching, refined and filtered are commonly used.  This blog seeks to offer up the materials definitions that are most important to you.

Worker honeybee with wax scales from Beeswax: Production, Harvesting, Processing and Products by William Coggshall & Roger Morse, published by Wicwas Press, 1984.

Beeswax is secreted by wax glands in the bee’s abdominal area and used to create the honeycombs of the hive. Pure beeswax is composed solely of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Its natural color when it is secreted is white. When beeswax is harvested from the hive it is often contaminated with impurities, which discolor it. At this stage it is called unrefined or crude beeswax.

Crude Beeswax from Ethiopia

Unrefined or crude beeswax is colored in a range of earthy hues from yellow to black. This coloration is caused by pollen, propolis (resin), and dirt. If you use unrefined wax for its color, it is important not to assume that the color is permanent because the color  is organic matter, which is not necessarily stable in light and is subject to fading, darkening, or a color shift. (See below for variations of crude beeswax)

Crude Beeswax Domestic

Crude Beeswax from New Zealand

These are reasons why you would most likely want to use decolorized, white beeswax for encaustic. You may wonder how does the wax get whitened? Artist manufacturers avoid the term ”bleached beeswax” because it implies the use of chemical bleaches. But the wax industry uses the term for the mechanical as well as the chemical methods of decolorizing beeswax.

Chemical bleaching is not the best choice for artists for two reasons. For one, chemical bleaching (which uses either potassium permangenate & phosphoric acid or sulfuric acid or various peroxides) does not always mean removing the colorant. In many cases it simply masks it. It is often used to whiten colorants that non-chemical bleaching can’t, but these colorants can later return to their original color. Furthermore, chemical bleaching can be harsh on the wax, creating free fatty acids and making the wax more reactive to pigments and pollutants.

Sun bleached beeswax plant from The Chemistry and Technology of Waxes by Albin H. Warth, published by Reinhold Publishing Company, 1956.

Sun bleaching exposes the wax to the ultraviolet light of the sun, which breaks down the colorants. This is a gentle and effective method of decolorizing the wax. The process, however, is expensive on an industrial scale because it requires so much space, but it is also the most accessible method for artists who want to bleach their own wax on a small scale.

Filtration is a process in which the wax is forced under high pressure through filters of activated carbon and clay that absorb the colorants and take out all foreign matter. Filtration is preferable to chemical bleaching because it maintains the structural integrity of the wax. It is also, in the long run, the least expensive and the most practical of the three methods. It is the best choice for artist material.

Example of a Filter

Pharmaceutical grade beeswax is a standard set by the government that certifies that the wax meets certain chemical requirements and that it is pure beeswax. The chemical standards (such as its ability to be saponified) are of importance to the cosmetic and pharmaceutical use of beeswax. For the artist, the real importance of pharmaceutical grade beeswax is that it is a guarantee that the beeswax has not been adulterated with other waxes (such as paraffin or microcrystalline), rosins, stearic acid, or tallow. However, the term pharmaceutical grade does not refer to the method by which it has been decolorized. Artists should seek out wax that is both guaranteed 100% beeswax and filtered or sun bleached.

And, in case you’re wondering, R&F uses only pharmaceutical grade filtered beeswax.

This blog is an amplification of comments that I originally posted on www.AMIEN.org.

Mark your calendars!

Saturday, May 1st from 1pm-4pm

This coming weekend R&F has teamed up with Jerry’s Artarama in West Hartford, CT and artist Leslie Giuliani for a demonstration of materials and techniques in Encaustic Painting on Saturday, May 1st from 1-4pm at:

Jerry’s Artarama of CT
1109 New Britain Avenue
West Hartford, CT 06110
860-232-0073

Leslie will demonstrate the uses of both encaustic paint and Pigment Sticks.  There will be supplies on-hand for participants to use.  This is a great way to explore encaustic painting.

The demonstration is $10.  With your registration fee you will receive Free Samples and a $ Saving Event Coupon.  Call 860-232-0073 for more information and to reserve your space.

Artwork: Leslie Giuliani, Ritual, 2003.  Encaustic on wood.

About Leslie:
Leslie Giuliani received her BFA from the University of Delaware and has studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the School of Sacred Arts, and the Finishing School. She has an extensive education in the materials of making art. Her work is in the collection of the State of Connecticut and has been featured in two international encaustic biennial exhibitions and the national touring exhibition Oil and Wax. She incorporates printmaking, drawing, collage, and textiles in her own encaustic pieces. She has been an independent teacher for 15 years.

Sunday, May 2nd from 11am-2pm

On  Sunday, May 2nd R&F and artist Kristin Swenson-Lintault will be celebrating the Grand Opening of  Blick Art Materials in Seattle, WA with a free encaustic  demonstration from 11am-2pm.  Additional information regarding the Grand Opening events  can be found on Dick Blick’s website or by clicking here.  This event is a great chance visit Blick’ new art store, meet Kristin, and try your hand at encaustic painting.  Kristin will have materials available so that all participants can express themselves with paint.

Blick Art Materials
1600 Broadway Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122
206-324-0750

About Kristin:
Kristin Swenson-Lintault is a multi-media artist (born 1969) in Kentucky, raised in Illinois, and currently lives in Seattle, WA. with husband and son. She earned her MFA in Fiber/Textiles and BA in Fine Art-Drawing at Southern Illinois University. She studied painting at Hospitalfield House, a 13C. Studio Arts Centre in Scotland and studied traditional natural dye and indigo textile printing and dyeing, washi papermaking, and wood fired ceramics in Japan and South Korea. In addition she has traveled to France, Netherlands, Germany, Mexico and Belize to research art, history and architecture.

In 2001, after a visit to R&F Handmade Paints to witness encaustic paint production, she began combining aspects of her earlier approach to drawing, painting, textile dyeing and printing, paper pulp painting, floor cloths, ceramics, outdoor installations, and photography, into her encaustic painting. Her encaustic paintings were juried into the first 2007 Annual Encaustic Conference exhibition as well as last year’s 2009 Conference show at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA.  Her KSL STUDIO blog is her art studio journal of recent work, sketchbook drawings and travel photos that together explore her creative process. Kristin teaches mixed media encaustic painting workshops with a fiber/textile emphasis at her studio in Seattle.