R&F Handmade Paints

Hi everyone,

I just want to let everyone in the Santa Fe area know that Euphrosyne Doxiadis, who wrote The Mysterious Fayum Portraits will be giving a lecture on October 29, 3:15pm at St. John’s College, 1160 Camino Cruz Blanca, Junior Commons Room.

Prior to that, on October 28, she will be giving  a demonstration of encaustic technique at Artisan Santa Fe, 2601 Cerrillos Road.

Doxiadis’ book on the Fayum portraits is unfortunately out of print. Unfortunate, because it is indispensible to anyone wanting a glimpse at the techniques and materials of the painters, and the social/historical context within which they flourished for an all too brief a time. The reproductions in the book are stunningly beautiful, and the text is sound scholarship. If you find a used copy in any decent condition, grab it.

Doxiadis is also a painter, working in the encaustic medium she knows so well. It’s highly unusual to see someone who has bridged the two worlds of scholarship and practice. I know, from my own correspondence with her, that she is very engaging and passionate about her twin fields.

Hello everyone,

I want to let you know that we have just published a history of R&F. We are very often asked how we started out, in fact it’s many times one of the first questions raised by workshop participants when they come here.

The story of a paint manufacturer, like that of art supply stores and art galleries, is an often little known aspect of the history of an art period. For example, many art stores did not start out as art stores. Some were originally house paint stores, others cloth vendors, others pawn shops, stretcher makers, etc. Artists, being an enterprising group, can descend on an area of low rent, turn it into an art scene and get neighborhood merchants who had nothing to do with art materials to provide them with what they do have that is cheap and creatively useful. Suddenly these merchants find themselves selling art supplies too.

The story of R&F is a little different in that its history is linked to the broader history of encaustic materials and practice in the United States. That history, of artists looking to the past for inspiration and to unusual mediums for unique statements, has led to the profusion of encaustic painting today. To read about R&F’s role in that saga, you can download our history from our website or contact us for a hard copy.

-Richard

Self-Portrait/Portrait

Hi all,

This is to let you know that I have joined the blog world. Me? Surprisingly yes. Those of you who knew me back when know that it’s not an accident that I got involved with an ancient obscure paint like encaustic. Anything old and classical — paper & pencil, manual typewriters…now, a quarter of a century later, I’m blogging. Go figure.

What I will be blogging about is all this information we have collected over the years and used in our paint making, our literature, our encaustic and Pigment Stick classes, and our lectures. Lately, I have given a number of talks on paint materials and on the history of encaustic painting at schools and conferences. I plan to serialize parts of these talks in the form of anecdotes and examples, because, if nothing else, they can be fun reading.

One of these talks is about paint materials — color and reflection, mediums and refraction. Some of it is impossible to convey over the internet, because it is about how the actuality of the material is unreproduceable. But much of the information is communicable online. Histories of pigments, charts on the bending of light, the reasons behind the various characteristics of pigments and mediums, why different periods employed different mediums, sources for further reading on color and materials, etc.

Another talk is about ancient encaustic painters, how they worked and the tools, materials, and techniques they used. New literature on old subjects keeps getting published with revised information or something in one of our workshops makes me realize something. I would love to share this with you and in turn learn things from your responses.

So look for my blog on our website, and I’m looking forward to dialoguing with you.

The Self-Portrait/Portrait, by the way, was part of a project I did in 1994 with Dorothy Wiegner at the Vermont Studio Center. We did self-portraits and then traded half way through, finishing them as portraits. We also did the reverse, starting with portraits and finishing them as self-portraits. And, of course we used Pigment Sticks.

– Richard

I will be speaking at a forum on encaustic painting at Virginia Commonwealth University on October 22^nd. The title of my talk is “Ancient Encaustic Painters.” The forum is part of The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic, an encaustic extravaganza organized by Reni Gower, professor of art at VCU.
The event includes simultaneous demonstrations by 6 encaustic painters displaying their individual techniques, an exhibit of paintings by the featured artists as well as the forum in which the artists discuss the intertwining of their concepts with encaustic. Along with Reni and me, the participants are Kristy Deetz from DePere WI, Peter Dykhuis from Bedford, Nova Scotia, Lorraine Glessner Philadelphia, PA, Cheryl Goldsleger from Athens, GA, Jeff Hirst from Minneapolis, MN, and Tim McDowell from West Mystic, CT.

Richard