R&F Handmade Paints

R&F is please to present the work of Kingston artist Hendrik Dijk.  “So Far, So Close” opens Saturday October 3rd.  There will be a reception from 5 to 7 p.m and Hendrik will give an informal artist talk at 5pm. 

Hendrik Dijk’s work is about energy.  He is a colorist who will use form, find and create for the purpose of letting colors have a life of their own.  Dijk thinks that colors are like humans; each one is unique and likes to have good neighbors.  Therefore, even though his work is often chromatically pronounced, he always asks himself if each color harmonizes with neighboring colors.

Born in Oostmahorn, Friesland, Netherlands, Hendrik Dijk moved to the USA in 1983. Since 1986, he has lived in Kingston, NY and teaches art at Kingston High School. He has made six murals for the City of Kingston in city parks. Dijk’s present creative efforts go mainly into painting and photography.  He is a co-founder of the Arts Society of Kingston and the Kingston Biennial Sculpture Show.  Click here to view Hendrik’s website.

The Gallery at R&F is featuring this exhibition of Kingston’s own Dutchman as a way of celebrating the 400-year anniversary of Henry Hudson’s crossing of the Hudson River.  From spring through fall, Ulster County is celebrating Henry Hudson’s 1609 journey up the river that bears his name with dozens of special events.  Click here for complete celebration details.

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George Mason is an artist from Nobleboro, ME with a long history of painting encaustic onto plaster. This month, he came down to Kingston for a week to experiment in our workshop with encaustic monotype.  Image 1

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George came here loaded with elaborate and delicate stencils that he had drawn freehand and cut out in his studio. The stencils were part of a repeating monotype process, creating an interplay between encaustic’s molten chaos, the stencils’ rigid patterns, the absorbency of the paper, and ghost images from previous pulls. Image 2

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His first step is to lay a color on the palette. Image 3

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The stencil is laid over that.  Image 4

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A sheet built up with the paint from unsuccessful pulls is reutilized by laying face-down over the stencil. Newsprint is laid over this and burnished with matboard shims and the blotter is pulled. Image 5

The palette now has the layer of white, the stencil, and the color from the blotter. A sheet of Arches Text is laid on the ghost. Image 7

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The paper absorbs the color.  Image 8

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The palette is wiped clean and Egyptian violet is applied. Image 9

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The previous print is laid face-up, allowing the violet underneath to soak up like a slowly developing photo negative. Image 10, 11 & 12

George plays with endless variations on this process. Different papers create different effects. He particularly likes the way the metallic colors work in the monotypes, partially separating out from the wax and bunching up in ways that look to him like ice floating on water.

Learn more about George’s work at: www.georgemasonart.com

Interested in learning about Monotypes, click here to find out about our Visting Artist Workshop with Monotype expert Paula Roland.

Self Portrait with Striped hat

We are very saddened to hear about the death of our good friend, Richard Merkin.  Richard was a revered teacher at Rhode Island School of Design and a long time illustrator for the New Yorker magazine. We knew Richard since the early 1990s. He was much more than a customer to us. He loved our Pigment Sticks, and we greatly loved the work he did with them. Those of you who like our Cerulean Blue Extra Pale can thank Richard for that. It was his urging that prompted us to make it.

Taxi Dancing

Richard’s solo show in the Gallery at R&F in 2002 filled the room with whimsy and romance. But our love of his work is as personal as it is professional. One of his paintings, which is in our permanent collection at R&F, is an uproariously comical portrait that he did of Jim and me many years ago. It is typical of the sharp observation and sly wit that characterized his work.

Richard and Jim

The same year that he had his show here, he came to teach a special Pigment Stick workshop.  His gregarious nature and delightful personality was infectious and the students had a fabulous, productive time.   He made a lasting impression not only on them but on the whole staff at R&F.

R&F has officially launched a new regional workshop site in far-off Newfoundland. Wayne Montecalvo & I traveled there to set it up and teach a collaborative Encaustic and Printmaking workshop. The first half of the workshop focused on printmaking, (trace monotypes and paper lithography), taught by Anita Singh at St. Michael’s Printshop. Then we moved north along the Avalon Penninsula to Torbay Bight Studio, perched right on the edge of the Atlantic, and hosted by Carol Bajen-Gahm.

We had a wonderful time, met some amazing artists, and had several surprise guests - some humpback whales who were feeding in the cove right outside the studio. The first spotting happened right in the middle of the first demonstration, and that whale stayed around for three days, and was joined by a few others, though they all maintained some distance from one another. Newfoundlanders may take the spectactular land and seascape that surrounds them for granted, but apparently they never tire of watching whales. By the last afternoon of our workshop, folks were gathered all around, sharing beer and wine, binoculars, telescopes and cameras, (also looking with interest at what has been made in the workshop). Amazing!

Be on the lookout for future workshops at Torbay Bight Studio - maybe you can have an amazing adventure too.

Cadmium Text is curated by local poet and book artist Anne Gorrick and focuses on innovative writing from in and around the Hudson Valley.  The Gallery at R&F provides the backdrop for the readings.  Don Byrd and Chris Piuma will read in Cadmium Text Series on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 2pm.    

Don Byrd lives in Albany, NY, and teaches at the State University. His publications include Aesop’s Garden, Charles Olson’s Maximus, Technics of Travel, The Great Dime Store Centennial, and The Poetics of the Common Knowledge. In the mid-1990s, having decided that something had gone terribly wrong, and for the most part, quit publishing. He has been working intently on a writing of ambiguous genre during these many years. It is entitled “Abstraction.” It is now nearing completion. Thousands of pages have been written and most of them filed away, some on electronic media that would now be hard access.

Chris Piuma is thinking about nouniness. Chris Piuma has had a few chapbooks published, but they’re out of print, so you can’t have any. Chris Piuma wishes it weren’t so hot out. Chris Piuma just added a new post on his poety blog, Buggeryville, at: http://www.buggeryville.blogspot.com/ Chris Piuma is accustomed to the third person. Chris Piuma and how grammar enables affective connections with the dead. Chris Piuma misses Portland and co-organizing the Spare Room poetry series, but enjoys Toronto and grad school. Chris Piuma is learning yet another language! Chris Piuma remembers when life provided cocktail party anecdotes, but now it’s all Facebook status updates.

Previous poets have included:  Lynn Behrendt, Celia Bland, JJ Blickstein, Dennis Doherty, Anne Gorrick, Lea Graham, Kate Greenstreet, Joshua Harmon, Jane Heidgerd, Steve Hirsch, Jennifer Wai-Lan Huang, Geof Huth, Robert Kelly, Maryrose Larkin, Charlotte Mandel, Susan McKechnie, PF Potvin, Richard Rizzi, Carly Sachs, Lorna Smedman, Maureen Thorson, R. Dionysius Whiteurs, and Rebecca Wolff.

Artist Cat Crotchett recently spent two weeks in Indonesia teaching encaustic workshops.  R&F donated the paints used during the workshops.

Exterior View of the Workshop Space

Encaustic Palette and Torch

The first 3-day class held at Brahm Tirta Sari 2 in Yogyakarta, Java, explored batik art and how it can be combined with encaustic paint.  Cat was “amazed at how quickly both the batik artists and the painters adapted to encaustic painting (and fell in love with it).”  The batik artists incorporated canting tools, thin metal tools that are used to create fine lines and patterns.  The artists also experimented with batiking caps, or stamps to create texture and incised marks.

Batiking Caps in a Cap Pan

The second workshop held at Taman Budaya in Yogyakarta, Java, and sponsored by Antena Projects, was for practicing Indonesia painters.  Cat was amazed at how proficient and productive they were with the medium.  “Participants…focused on developing one or two complete finished works of art per day of each workshop. Each of these images was impressive in its conceptual thoughtfulness and formal unity – something quite unusual for a workshop format.”

Ali Incorporating the Canting Tool

An exhibition of Cat’s work at the Gallery at the Culture House Barbarab Segaragunung in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia took place in conjunction with the workshops.

Indonesia Painters Seated Around An Encaustic Palette

In the near future Cat plans to create “a body of work influenced by the experience of the cross-cultural workshops in Indonesia.”  In addition an article by Dr. Mary-Louise Totton on Cat’s work and the cross-cultural encaustic workshops will be in Visual Arts International Magazine, a prominent art magazine in Indonesia.