From The Collection: Cat Crotchett
Artist Cat Crotchett has taught painting at the Gwen Frostic School of Art at Western Michigan University for over twenty-five years. She believes her teaching practice helps to keep her creativity active and notes that her school is fortunate enough to have two mobile encaustic carts, which allows her to expose undergraduate students to encaustic painting.
Unique Color: Olive Yellow
We would like to briefly touch upon one with fondness and that is the golden, awkward, beauty we call Olive Yellow. Introduced in 2016, Olive Yellow contains three pigments: Cadmium Yellow Light, Stil de Grain and Ultramarine Violet. Reminiscent of Van Gogh’s sunflower yellows, its essence finds its origin in a bright and bold Cadmium Yellow tarnished, no, complicated by the presence of earthy Stil de Grain and cool Ultramarine Violet. We end up with a paint going in two directions and somehow meeting in the middle in the form of a warm/cool/dirty/bright, greenish yellow.
From The Collection: Lisa Pressman
If you’ve had the opportunity to visit R&F Handmade Paints in Kingston, New York during the last two years, chances are you’ve seen R&F Core Instructor Lisa Pressman’s stunning piece Talking, which hangs just to the left of the entrance to production. A native of New Jersey, Pressman received her BA in fine art from Douglass College, Rutgers University and her MFA in painting from Bard College. She has been exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions since 1981 and her work is in numerous private and public collections. Pressman embraces “materials, touch, and their interplay as driving forces” to produce paintings that embody “a visual synthesis of stored memory.”
Unique Color: Sepia
From a paint maker’s point of view this color can be a bit daunting, if not downright frustrating to wrangle into reality (apologies to Management, just being honest here). There are a few reasons for this. Let’s take a look.
From The Collection: Carol Bajen-Gahm
In 2017, Carol Bajen-Gahm was part of THE LAST PICTURE SHOW: FORCES & artifacts, a two-person exhibition with Pamela Blum at R&F. Root Cellar Meditation #12 was part of this exhibition and was later acquired for R&F’s permanent collection. Highly influenced by the natural world, Bajen-Gahm’s work investigates time shifts, spatial juxtapositions, and the disordered aspects of nature. She has long been attracted to dark spaces, such as tangled roots, wells, and caves, as well as dreams and fairy tales.
Unique Color: Green Earth
A little over twenty six years ago (February 24, 1993 to be precise), paint maker Richard Frumess created a small test batch (just 32 oz.) of what he then referred to as “Terre Verte,” now known in the R&F color line as Green Earth. According to Richard’s account, he was looking for a Green Earth that leaned grey. Early hand mixed versions included Raw Sienna, Viridian, and Bone Black, but for the first milled, production batch he would increase the total number of pigments to five – including Raw Sienna, Ultramarine Blue, Chromium Oxide Green, Viridian, and Mars Yellow Light.
From The Collection: Lynette Haggard
The second in our “From The Collection” series is Unfolded #3 by artist Lynette Haggard. One of several pieces from Lynette’s 2015 solo exhibition at R&F, Frames of Reference, Unfolded #3 is an exploration of the structure within a grid, as well as the grid’s relationship to a light and indeterminate space.
Unique Color: Ancient Gold
It’s hard not to consider grand ideas and cosmic connections when pondering a color like the one we’re about to introduce for the very first time at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown. Ideas like time and space, the rise and fall of civilizations, socioeconomic inequality, even presidential politics (wink, wink). Its unique luster is that beguiling even in the crowded and shiny company of our existing eight color iridescent lineup.
Unique Color: Cobalt Turquoise
Cobalt Turquoise is hands down one of the most underrated colors in the R&F color line. A semi-transparent gem of a blue that can conjure ideas of the sea - think Mediterranean - bluish and greenish, old and wise. So underappreciated, so misunderstood, it frequently finds itself on the dreaded ‘bottom seller list’ year after year. Oof. How’s that for transparent?
From The Collection: Rifka Angel
If you’ve been to R&F for a workshop or tour, you might have noticed we have quite an impressive collection of paintings. This piece by artist Rifka Angel, Sonja or Remembering Dostoyevsky’s Literature, 13” x 10”, encaustic on panel, date unknown, is one of our oldest. Though Karl Zerbe, the German painter who served as chair for the Boston Museum School’s painting department in the 1930s and 40s is widely credited for his work with encaustic, Rifka Angel preceded him by several years. Angel began working with encaustic in the early 1930s and continued doing so until her death in 1988.
Unique Color: a note on light*
Pretty early on in the discussions of our new website we began throwing around ideas about how we might capture and convey color in a different, more unique way. But how? We knew we wanted to move beyond the dry technicality of the ‘color swatch’. The flat square most of us are accustomed to seeing online and in print may suggest color but hardly captures the true, studio experience of light landing on fresh paint.