Journey

In the past month I have gotten a fair bit of painting done and also experimenting. Here is some more of what I was working on just before Christmas.

This is more in encaustics, but instead of small pieces with tissue and other papers in the wax as I showed in a post last month, I worked on a large board. Working large in encaustics is a LOT more work. It takes more effort to cover larger surfaces, as the molten wax and pigment harden up quite quickly once taken out on a brush or adhered to substrates and surfaces. It takes quite a while to create and build up and cover a large board like this one, which is 48 x 61 cm (19" x 24").

There were some very cool looking corrugated cardboard pieces around, quite large and so I dipped it in the wax and thus attached them to the board surface. It took several pieces to create a doorway. I like doorways, gates, portholes and windows. Basically vantage points to frame and see other scenes, or gateways to other places and experiences.

This piece is like my vantage point to a journey. I have a recurring image and dream about a journey, one in which the path is not clear until I am about to take the next step, and then all of a sudden it is presented to me... before that moment I did not know which way it would go or what it would look like, but then it magically becomes apparent and I can continue, knowing the way ahead.

The corrugated surface is like many sheds and buildings and rooflines here so perhaps it is symbolizing my journey to this life and home here. Even in the studio space at Salon Rouge Gallery (where I painted this), you can see the same shape and texture making up some of the Gallery walls behind me. The Gallery was formerly a mechanics shed and garage in its previous lifecycle and some of those original walls have been retained, offering some genuine character. I enjoyed using dark blues and greens and also making the surface look weathered and rusty. I used wax for that, building up the surface. The weathered bits are made of many shades of related colors and the rust is orange, dark red orange, yellow and orange-yellow hues.

Adhered onto the gateway's surface are some postage stamps, small items that make possible passage ways of their own, little tickets for messages and letters that will cover distance and time to get from senders to destinations. Perhaps they will accompany pleasant deliveries to their recipients ? I like to think they will.

The lettering came out well and I have created a blue sky vista beyond the portico here. The view beyond is created with layers of beeswax and paint in colors of buff, white, offwhite, and soft blues and cerulean. The surface has been scraped and polished to create the texture shown.

This piece reminds me to see the blue skies ahead.

New Encaustics Techniques

A bit late to post, while I finish pre holiday To Do list chores, but here is my update about some encaustics work I did last week at Salon Rouge Gallery in Kapunda, South Australia.

It was scorching hot weather and hot inside the (not insulated) gallery too. The heat pans for the encaustics waxes made things hotter. Like being in a sauna !

We experimented with some new techniques. One involved cutting small squares of the freezer paper the size of our art boards, and dipping into wax and applying to the board in layers. Very interesting. Even more interesting was dipping colored tissue paper into the plain beeswax and layering it on. You might think the tissue paper would rip, but the wax actually seems to have strengthened it ! This was with a single layer of the tissue paper too, so pretty delicate on its own. You do have to be careful, using tongs, or you fingers to dip most of the tissue paper in the wax and remove it in a way not to drip, but fast enough to adhere to your layers in the works. Then you can use a paintbrush in the plain wax to put some wax onto the bit of the tissue paper (corner ?) you were holding, so it gets covered too.

It came out great though ! First, the colored tissue paper retains its color and character and the wax gives it some shape, so it has more structure. Second, it does adhere and bind to the layer before. Doing different colored tissue paper as layers or stripes looks really good. You ca also build up your layers with some dimension and crinkle or fold it, and make it build up not just flat, but with some very interesting structure to it.

I added in some bits of vintage maps, and put clear paraffin wax over the surface of them that was intended to be seen. Beeswax can be opaque and the detail of the map would not show. I do not prefer working with paraffin, I find it cracks and I don't like its lineage (it is a petrochemical product), so I use as little as possible to achieve the result...and I use beeswax around it.

My maps were of Baja California. I was born and grew up in California and have fond memories of travel along or south of the border or listening to radio stations from places like Calexico or Mexicali (good spanish language practice !). One of the maps had some detail I extended in beeswax and pigment and the other board got a similar treatment, but no real map fragment, I just emulated the other.

And I did some other layered pieces in this theme. One has cardboard under the tissue and other paper. So it is taller and it has an interesting side, and has some dimension too. I spilled beeswax and pigment over the side, in sea greens, I liked how that came out. Its companion shown here is a small piece I did with tissue paper and I folded it in accordian pattern before dipping it in the wax...and also folded it to make it look like a wave. Then I painted on the foam on the wave at its edges.

It was a fun little warm up.

Then for bigger things we started working on large boards. See the next post for more about that !

Hot Landscape

I spent the past four days in South Australia, painting at Jacqueline Coates' Salon Rouge Gallery while my daughter Karen and her boyfriend Greg took the hire car and toured the wine country in the Barossa and Clare Valleys there. Karen and Greg are visiting on their break from Norweigian Cruise Lines Pride of America, which sails around the Hawaiian islands and where they work as bar managers. The weather was fine on arrival, but got hot and hotter each day we were there. Working with encaustics in the gallery was a good sort of experience, akin to being in a sauna (dry heat !).

Jacqueline had other people doing encaustics too, so the first two days we spent in a workshop. I stayed on to paint landscapes in oils on Wednesday.

It turns out Wednesday was really hot. 40C at least ! (that is 104 F if you are American, yes, pretty hot). But we prepared things and went out to find a scenic view to paint in the countryside. Here is what we found, a lovely farm scene with some rolling hills in the background, hay bales, an old rusty roofed farm building, and some trees, vineyards, and fields. A fence line in the foreground with some nice purple wild flowers (maybe weeds ?). We set up easels and paints, turps, medium at the shoulder of a country road and worked on painting. Jac works much faster and more confidently than I do...but she has a lot more experience and skill too.

This was a bit of adventure, for me anyway...we got visits from flies (once I started to perspire, they came after my face and neck !), bugs got into the oil paint, on easel and also on painting !, I had some sunscreen and also borrowed a hat for awhile, before its string (to keep it from flying away) broke. Sunnies for sure, it was bright out. And winds were high and at times something to manage in the face of. Occasionally big trucks would whiz by on the road.

I did ok for almost an hour and a half. As you can see from the large pic above (which you can see closer up if you double click it), I used a palette knife and put the paint on thicker in places. And then the heat got to me, I really felt it, started to make some mistakes, and experience some frustration. And I had forgotten to sunscreen my hands and also feet, and one foot got pretty sunburned. Not the plan and I definitely felt it. But my painting was Almost Done, so just small things, for another 10 minutes past that, which felt like forever...but made a good difference. Jac is an excellent teacher and had some good critique and tips for me to finish this off, so we could pack up and escape the heat.

See my finished painting above ! I accentuated the rolling of the hills and also used bolder colors than I might have thought to use, which was a positive thing for me, and was pretty happy with the experience and the result.

The painting is drying at Salon Rouge and will travel here by post when dry enough. You can see we had different vantage points for this painting session. And I can tell you those hay bales are harder to paint than they look, at least they were for me ! Painting landscapes out on location like this is not as easy as it might look...

More tomorrow, with a post on some really interesting encaustics painting I did at Salon Rouge Gallery earlier this week.

Sentry

Last weekend I spent a few days in South Australia, painting at Jacqueline Coates' gallery Salon Rouge in the small and peaceful township of Kapunda. The town is between the Barossa and Clare Valleys, both fine wine-making regions in that state.

While at Salon Rouge I did some encaustics painting, starting a new direction that I am researching and planning to pursue, paintings inspired by the Imperial Palace in China. Here is a pic of me working on some of the encaustics paintings I have started (also see previous post below for some examples). Salon Rouge has a great set up for the encaustics and many more colors than I have in my smaller home studio space.

It was also fantastic to catch up with other artists there and learn what they are working on. There is a great exhibition on the walls of the gallery at the moment. 'Reclaimed' explores art made from recycled and salvaged materials. Absolutely awesome stuff ! Check out the landscapes painted on wine barrel lids by Deb Hilditch, and sculpture compositions made from old tin ceilings by Ilona Glastonbury, and much more. See www.salonrougegallery.com for more info on this current exhibition.

When leaving Kapunda to return home, I stopped to photograph some of the local landscapes. The area has had a lot of rain lately, breaking a previous drought. It has really greened up nicely. I saw some sheep and decided a landscape with them might be nice, I stopped by the side of the road and began to photograph them, using a nice optical zoom I have on my new small camera. There were ewes with new lambs, and all the sheep seemed peacefully grazing in the afternoon sunlight. All was well and good in their world. Then ! One sheep, at the top of the hill, noticed me and decided I was too close I guess. I think he was their Sentry. He let out a very loud bleating call and all the sheep close to the fence line turned and ran away !! When they were far enough from me and the fence, they resumed their grazing, and Sheep Sentry kept an eye in my direction, to be sure I kept at a suitably safe distance.

I had not meant to disturb or bother the grazing animals, but guess they felt I was too close for safety. I did get a few more photos of the sheep, relying more on the zoom than I had wanted...but oh well. Then I headed back to the car for my drive back to the airport. Still, a good afternoon and now I have running sheep in pasture to add to my photo library !