R&F Handmade Paints

There will be two encaustic demonstrations happening on Saturday May 30th:

Mary Black "Seeds"

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The opening for Encaustic Works 2009 was held Sunday at The Castle Gallery in New Rochelle, NY and it was very well attended especially considering that the artists hailed from several countries and all over the United States.

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This weekend will mark the 7th juried biennial Encaustic Works show.   This year’s juror is accomplished artist, Heather Hutchison.

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While I was in New York to check out galleries and visit artists’ studios, I dropped in at Ameringer-Yohe Fine Art on 57th St. to see Judy Pfaff’s new show. www.ameringer-yohe.com

The show is made up of large deep framed works in which wildly diverse materials seem to float together in a masterly demonstration of opulence and rhythmic form.

None of the work is in encaustic, but that does not make it irrelevant to our usual focus on that medium. Pfaff’s juxtaposition of incidental “things” – papers, wires, aluminum foil, rattan, file folders, umbrella spokes, fishing floats – is a great stimulator to those of us who use wax as the matrix for a similar integration.

That seemingly thrown-together approach is typical of the way I have seen Pfaff also use encaustic, particularly in her print work. These are not “encaustic pieces” per se; the encaustic is there as another object being used uniquely with the other elements – enhancing them, highlighting them, counterpointing, or collaborating with them as a versatile mixed media material.
And by the way, I should point out here as we prepare for our 7th biennial encaustic exhibit, that Pfaff was the juror for our 2nd biennial in 1999, shaping a wonderfully diverse display of sculpture and paintings from the hundreds of entries we received that year.
Here are a couple examples from the catalogue for that show: