Tuesday, 4/25/11: Liz Walker

Liz Walker brought her creative energy to Muse today to work on an acrylic painting with elements of printmaking and collage.   Liz likes to bring a lot of pattern and texture into her paintings and tries to avoid large areas of plain solid colors.  Along with her paints and brushes, Liz brought some paper scraps and wallpaper and fabric swatches with her.  She cut and painted small pieces of paper and collaged them into her painting to add a bit of texture and dimension to the pillows on the couch.  She used the texture of the wallpaper and fabric pieces to print and stamp patterns onto her painting with contrasting colors of paint.  To get the blended and scumbled look she likes, Liz says she’s also been incorporating more gray tones and neutrals into her paintings and juxtaposing them against brighter colors.

Liz enjoys painting figures in everyday settings.  The shapes and colors she chooses give her  scenes balance, order, and visual interest that would work equally well as abstract compositions.  ”I work from chaos to order,” Liz says as she builds the layers of her painting.  She finds that getting started with a painting is the easy part, but proceeding to the point of knowing when and how to finish is the real challenge.

Liz teaches beginning watercolor painting as well as acrylic monotype at Multnomah Arts Center and Village Gallery of Arts.  In addition to the An Artist A Day event this month, she is participating in an upcoming show at the Village Gallery of Arts in which 100 artists will exhibit four 6×6 paintings.  More of her work can be seen on her website, lizwalkerart.com.

Click on thumbnails to see larger pictures.

Monday, 4/11/11: Stephen Welch

Steve Welch is an artist and designer who creates mixed-media collage-and-acrylic pieces and also works professionally in digital media.  He says he follows a similar process no matter what type of project he’s working on.  He starts with a lot of sketching to generate and explore ideas, then he starts developing his ideas with a certain visual goal in mind.  As he proceeds, he allows new ideas and discoveries to influence his path along the way until his series of artistic decisions sets a definite direction.

Like many artists who have a background in design, Steve finds inspiration from wide-ranging and diverse visual sources.  Steve has a three-year-old daughter and has been inspired a lot lately by the art in children’s books.  He sometimes finds children’s books that might be more advanced than his daughter is ready for, but that he picks up because of the ideas he gets from the subjects and style of the illustrations.  His piece today was partly inspired by illustrations in a book he found recently, and partly grew out of sketches from projects he’d done in the past — labels he designed for a line of biscuits for horses, and flowers from a collaboration on a book project.  Steve likes to save sketches and ideas that he’s worked on before to adapt and re-use in new ways. Collage is an art form that allows an artist to bring a lot of different ideas together in one piece and also lends itself to a very fluid, intuitive process of development.  These characteristics fit Steve’s style and creative process very well.

The  last picture below shows Steve’s mixed-media painting at the end of the day Tuesday.  We’ll post an update with a picture of his finished piece. UPDATE:  The final picture show Steve’s finished piece.

Click on thumbnails below to see larger pictures.

5/7/10, Our final artist: Vanessa Crouch

Today we added a striking piece in acrylic with collage to the “An Artist A Day” exhibit.  Vanessa Crouch was unable to paint at Muse last Friday, April 30 due to a family emergency.  She picked up a canvas this week though, and completed the piece that she brought in today.  Vanessa works in a bold, graphic style with clean lines, contrasting colors and strong composition.  Below is the piece she made for “An Artist A Day”

One more finished piece came in today as well — Shanon Playford’s “big hair” portrait in oils — with a lot of detail since we last saw it! Check it out at the end of the blog post for 4/15 . . .

5/2/10 update: new art daily!

Several of our daily artists are still working on their pieces and will be bringing them to Muse as they finish.  This weekend, two more finished pieces have joined the exhibit.  A detail pen-and-ink drawing by Jillian Doughty, and an acrylic painting/collage by Stephen Welch.  Check out pictures of their finished work in the updates their blog postings. (click on names in the previous sentence.)  Or visit the “exhibit” page at AnArtistADay.com to see all the works so far.

The texture, depth and detail in these two pieces, like all the rest, cannot be truly captured in small webpage photos, so be sure to come see the exhibit in person now through May 13 at Muse Art and Design, 4224 SE Hawthorne (11am-6pm M-Sat, noon-5pm Sun)

Wednesday, 4/21/10: Bridget Benton

Thanks to guest writer Sally Murdoch King for today’s post

Bridget Benton started today with an image that was floating around in one of her many sketchbooks. This image was a pen and ink drawing of a heart superimposed with a beehive. Bridget also came armed with at least 2 dozen brushes of all sizes and a new caddy/holster torch system attached to her hip which was quite impressive to a number of passers-by. This new system allowed her to move freely, lay down between 20 and 30 layers of wax and sketches, and talk articulately about her craft.

The first few layers of her encaustic assemblage work, she explains, need to be very smooth, and she will add in texture later. When I mentioned her rib-cage torso encaustic piece with bone (pictured on Bridget’s artist page at AnArtistADay.com), she said she liked incorporating 3D elements in her work (one of her influences is shadow box pioneer Joseph Cornell), and in this case was a weasel bone.

In 1992 Bridget moved to Portland after completing her undergrad at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, home to where she draws her inspiration of color. The natural orange or clay color of the famed Garden of the Gods, frozen lava that juts 10 stories in the foothills of the Rockies and Pikes Peak have a disctinct lichen upon them. The lichen is often a spring green, and this color scheme of bright green and orange is often repeated in her works.

Bridget began working with encaustics in 2003 after she took a beeswax collage class in Portland. While she enjoyed it, the practice really took hold while taking an encaustics class with Linda Womack. For Bridget, doing encaustics is combining many of her loves. She says, “I can still do assemblage work but get the subtleties and luminosity qualities that traditionally are only found in working with acrylics.”

Bridget is a self-described process girl and she finds fusing the many layers of wax to be meditative, similar to her work with fibers in batik. She says she likes the surprises that the process of both methods present, as well as the effects that happen as she creates dialog with each piece. She loves watching the effects unfold as they form the next step. “I love not being completely in control,” she says.

As she layers today’s pieces in wax and paints the oranges and greens ,small pops of red also begin to peek through. She loves to see the orange and the green interact with each other. After a solid base of wax, then paints, she lays down sewing patterns. Oddly enough, the word BODICE shows under her piece, which she then covers with a sketch of arteries and the heart on rice paper.

Bridget teaches mixed media art classes, encaustics and she works in the small business development center at PCC. She attained her Masters in Creative Studies from SUNY which she harkens on a regular basis in helping entrepreneurs with creative problem solving.

A number of people come in as she works, fellow encaustics rock stars, former and future students as well as fellow board members of Portland Open Studios. One comments that she loves her website name: EyesAflame.com, which Bridget explains captures that glow students get when they see their finished artwork and their eyes light up.

The last image shows Bridget’s piece at the end of the day Wednesday.  We will post an update with a picture of the finished piece.

Tuesday, 4/20/10: Stephen Welch

Thanks to guest writer Kinoko for today’s post

Speaking with Stephen Welch in person, he is friendly and happy to be painting on what he considers a “personal” project in the storefront of Muse Art and Design.

With a full cart of art supplies, Sharpie paint pens and acrylic paints are his choice tools. Line matters to Stephen. Graphic, bright color defines his work. He is a natural visual communicator with a professional background in software graphics and a love for painted illustration.
A Seattle transplant now living in Portland, he “moved out when Seattle was getting too big,” he explains. That was twelve years ago and today he paints and collages the image of a bamboo chair onto a primed wooden panel. As a designer, he has worked since the nineties. He works for himself as a painter. Welch is clear on his identity, separating design work from the “personal” work he does as a fine artist.  “’Steve’, that’s what my friends call me. ‘Stephen’ is the name on my bank statement.” This reiterates for me that he knows when he is creating for himself and when he is designing for the needs of others. Looking through his work online, it’s clear to see that he excels at both icon and image. The paintings he creates are illustrative, simple and informative. He uses familiar objects and active, textured marks in paintings that are friendly and fun.

“I’m trying a new technique,” he explains. By painting with Golden soft gel (semi-gloss) over a Xerox of his original line art, he attempts to make a type of transfer. Eventually, he lays the copy onto the paint board and fills the black and white page with acrylic, never actually transferring the toner. It seems as though the process and the exploration of this work are just as enjoyable as what the result needs to be. Capturing the original line work is obtainable by painting enlarged photocopy of small sketches onto the canvas and he delights in building layers of arranged copy and cut. Yet, as in this piece, the strong image of the bamboo chair is never lost, but illuminated and rephrased.

Stephen Welch’s work can be viewed at swell-graphics.com/friends.html and his original painted works will be on display June 2010 at Portland’s North East Community Center necommunitycenter.org

Several artists have included signatures, titles or notes on the backs of their works.  The last photo shows the back side of Steve’s panel — a miniature work of art in itself!

Friday, 4/16/10: Amy Stoner

Thanks to guest writer Sally Murdoch King for today’s posting

Watching an encaustic artist work is almost like viewing a performance; there are all sorts of layers and vignettes that keep the process moving in bite-sized episodes. A few minutes of drying here, some scraping there, and you’ve got great entertainment. Watching someone as talented and patient as Amy Stoner is no exception. It’s easy to spot her predilection for teaching, too. On her afternoon of working the wax, she had a nice steady stream of spectators both inside and out. Each one who ventured inside asked questions, many jotted notes, and Amy answered with enthusiastic and articulate explanations.

Amy began her encaustic adventure 4 years ago. A printmaker with plentiful woodblock printmaking experience, she became tired of the regimentation of the process and editions. One day she took one of her woodblock prints and covered it with a clear wax. She immediately liked the effects the wax had over her acrylic paintings and woodblocks and began using pigmented waxes. Today, encaustic is her favorite medium because she can still make use of her first love: drawing, painting and prints. “I love working with all the art supplies,” she says while scraping away shapes with her ceramic carving tools. “Plus there’s so much you can do with wax.”

Amy moved to Oregon with her family at the age of 12. Now with a small family of her own that includes a toddler, finding time to work with wax is a juggling act. Mid afternoon while her little one is napping is often her best time to make art. She finds it easiest to turn on the wax to let it melt, put her daughter down and then go paint. Evenings are also a good time to find Amy working. She spends anywhere from 2 to 3 hours working on her encaustic projects and is largely self-taught. She gained her BFA in art from U of O in 1998 and has since taken courses from artist such as Jef Gunn at PNCA. She also teaches introductory and advanced encaustic courses in textures, patterns, painting and collaging with beeswax.

Today’s artwork began with a 12 x 16 panel. The first layer was pen and ink drawing. Then a clear coat of wax, then blocks of colored wax. Then she adhered her woodblock print with a small bit of glue. Then clear wax, then watercolors and gouache. She fuses the layers together with a torch to remove brushstrokes and air bubbles. She then scrapes back the wax to expose the vibrant orange hues, blacks and greens.

Amy’s artwork is largely influenced by propaganda prints from the 1920’s and 30’s. Her favorite artists include Frida Kahlo and art nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha as well as art, architecture and design from the Bauhaus and Arts and Crafts Movements.

Tuesday, 4/13/10: Linda Womack

Today our guest was encaustic artist, author, and teacher, Linda Womack.  Linda uses a variety of fascinating techniques in her multi-layered art and can effortlessly communicate about everything she is doing while she works.   Her skills as an artist and as a teacher always draw a crowd of people who are curious about the art of painting with beeswax.  Those who came to watch Linda work were treated to a full-afternoon demonstration packed with information.

Before she arrived today, Linda had prepared her wooden panel with a thick layer of joint compound which she had inscribed into and tinted with inks and watercolors.  She explained that the many layers of encaustic painting are difficult to build up in one afternoon, so the joint compound gave her a head start of color and texture that is also absorbent enough and tough enough to serve as a good foundation to hold the wax.

As she built up layers of colored wax paint and clear wax medium, Linda included some drawings in her layers that she had made using tissue paper and walnut ink.  The tissue paper disappeared into the wax, leaving the lines and colors of her drawings to blend into the layers.

In addition to adding colors with encaustic paint made of beeswax, damar resin, and pigment, Linda used india ink to heighten the contrast in certain parts of her painting.  Although water-based ink will not cover the wax solidly and evenly, the ink works almost as a stain when allowed to dry a bit and rubbed into the wax.

Linda’s finished piece is full of texture and translucent depth, qualities that really show off the unique properties of encaustic painting.

“My Courtyard,” Theresa Andreas-Oleary

With only 3o days in April and so many artists interested in participating in “An Artist A Day,”  we chose three additional artists to contribute a piece to the exhibit/auction.  Theresa Andreas O’Leary brought in her painting yesterday.  It is a beautiful piece in acrylic with an added collage element.  Theresa has been incorporating her old dressmaking patterns into her work recently, collaging them onto the canvas with clear acrylic medium.  She used to sew a lot for her kids when they were young, so using these pattern pieces is a way of processing a new stage of life with kids grown up and moving away.  Theresa’s use of acrylics paints and mediums, along with the pattern pieces, gives her work a wonderful sense of depth and texture.  The colors she uses and the way she applies them really make her canvas glow.  She also adds detail all around the edge of her canvas, which gives her work an almost sculptural quality.

Sunday, 4/4/10: Addie Boswell

Addie Boswell is an artist, writer, and illustrator who works in a variety of media, including collage and oil painting.  Her recent children’s book, The Rain Stomper won the 2008 Oregon Spirit Book Award.  Addie joined us again this year for An Artist A Day, and made a piece quite different from the magazine-paper collage she made in ’09.  Her piece today incorporated newspapers, playing cards, and her own black-paper cutouts to create a scene inspired by our current blustery wet weather.

In many of her collages, Addie carefully sorts and arranges magazine clippings by color, value (lights and darks), and patterns to assemble images that look both photographic and painterly.  In more recent years, Addie has explored the ancient art of black-paper silhouettes.  Today, for the first time, she combined these two techniques.  In order to help the cutouts stand out from the background, she limited her materials to black-and-white newspapers rather than using colored clippings.  She cut and pasted playing cards onto her background, then started drawing and cutting shapes from black paper.  As she built her collage, she also added red swatches to add an accent color to her black-and-white composition.

In order to let her composition develop, Addie pinned elements to her background so she could move them around as she worked.  She frequently stood back from her piece to look at the balance and arrangement of shapes and colors, and also took digital pictures in case she wanted to refer back to a previous arrangement of shapes.

To glue her paper pieces down, Addie used clear acrylic polymer, generally used as a painting medium to extend or add transparency to acrylic colors.  Acrylic mediums work very well as both an adhesive and a clear top coat.

The leaf-shaped cutouts in Addie’s piece were ones she had cut before and kept for possible use in future works.  The umbrella, cityscape, and portrait were elements that she drew and cut today specifically to add to this work.

Saturday, 4/3/10: Rachel Austin

Rachel Austin is a full-time artist whose work has become very popular in online stores, galleries, and retail stores around the country.  She has worked with many different types of media and has developed unique styles and techniques for different series of paintings.  The piece she made today was one of her “mixed media” series that incorporates maps, acrylic gel, pen drawing, and painting with oils.

Rachel had already created the background of her piece before she started today — a map of Monterrey Bay covered with a thick textured clear acrylic and a transparent pale yellow glaze of oil paint.  The visual effect of these layers resembles encaustic in its pale warm color and translucent texture.

Rachel began today with a pen sketch in a sketchbook which she recreated in larger size over her background.   Her theme of birds and flowers (lupines today) reflect her interest in simple shapes and images that convey a feeling of peaceful beauty.

Rachel added color to her pen drawing using oils.  Her light colors harmonized with the pale colors of her background and added brightness to her black pen drawing.  She finished her piece by going over the bird silhouettes again with pen to make the black more solid.

Many visitors to Muse today recognized Rachel’s style from seeing her work online and at regional art shows.  It was a treat to get a glimpse of the process she’s developed to create the special look in her art. Thanks Rachel!

Monday, April 27: Judith Devine

Judy creates collages with a  process that involves sealing each element with acrylic polymer and heat from an iron.  This technique fuses together the pieces with a smooth, seamless look and an almost glassy depth and surface.  Judy started today by using acrylic medium tinted with a light rust color to tone her panel, giving it a background hue that would tie in with the palette she’d selected for her collage elements.  She finished the edge of her panel with the tinted acrylic and copper-colored paper.  She had prepared some painted pieces on paper to use for her collage, which she also coated with the tinted acrylic.
As she was preparing her paper pieces with her panel face down for the edges to dry, Judy had a sudden inspiration.  She decided that the back of the braced panel would work beautifully as a surface to assemble the pieces of her collage.  Along with her painted faces, Judy brought rolls and scraps of decorative paper that she had selected for their colors, patterns and textures.  She arranged and layered her collage elements into the four sections of her panel along with the painted faces and fused each layer with acrylic medium and heat.  By the end of the afternoon, Judy had completed accents and details in some sections of her collage, but she wanted to continue adding more elements to some parts.  She will complete her collage in her studio and bring her finished piece back soon for the exhibit.

Update, 4/29:  The last image below show’s Judy’s finished piece.  The varied colors in the foils around the frame really set off the rich colors and patterns of the inner panels.