“Into Gold” Exhibition show cards

My showcards are in!  A big thanks to John Q. Do for the beautiful design.  Hope to see you at Erica Popp Studios + Gallery this Friday, September 7!  Opening reception 5-8 pm.  😀

Updates to Website

I have recently posted all of my work so far from my current ‘Folklore’ series under the “Current Work – Folktale Series (2013-2017)” section on the lefthand side of the home page, and under the “2010-2013 Paintings” subpage, found under “Previous Work” from the home page.  I still have images to post to the 2010-2013 section from the “Tapestry Series”, which was my first series of encaustic paintings, so check back soon!  More to come under “Previous Work” for prior years.

 

Artist’s Reception tonight at Fountain View Manor Memory Care in Granite City, Illinois

These pieces are currently on view through March 11 at Fountain View Manor Memory Care in Granite City, IL in an group art exhibition with 5 other artists. If you’re in the area tonight (Friday, 2/19) between 6-8 pm, I’d love to see you at the Artist’s Reception!
A big thank you to Mary Duban, Executive Director (and Fontbonne alumn) for inviting me to participate in the show!
http://www.fountainviewmemorycare.com/

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  Written by

  Elizabeth M. Willey

Also – works in the studio – complete or nearly so

This past Sunday, I took some time out from my anatomy studies to move forward on some encaustic pieces that have been hanging around.

These first 2 are 99.9% done, but just need to be fused.

8×8 inches

6×6 inches

This is maybe halfway done:
8×8 inches

And this is still only about 1/3 of the way done, just after the web has been gently fused in a bit:
8×8 inches

Encaustic mixed media demo on Sunday, September 21, from 1-3 pm

Hi, everyone!

If you’d like to visit my studio and hear about my encaustic techniques, my friend Linda Wein and I are doing a demo for the St. Louis WaxCentric Meetup group on Sunday, September 21, from 1-3 pm. For more information and to RSVP, please visit the Meetup event page: http://www.meetup.com/WaxCentric/events/205227612/?a=ea1_grp&rv=ea1&_af_eid=205227612&_af=event

The demo will be at the Fontbonne University grad studios (1300 Strassner Blvd., 63144 – parking details on event page) in the central atrium space. It would be great to see you, if you can make it! Don’t forget to RSVP so we know how many folks are coming!

Apple of Idun complete?

I think I may have finally finished my Idun piece. I need to let it set a bit before burning in, but I feel really good about it! 😀

Weekend Studio Time Part Deux

Loki piece after “burning in” last night’s oil painting. (Gently heating the painted area & wax to bond the oil paint to the beeswax layer below.)

Starting to develop the branch and the golden apple, but they still need work:

Weekend Studio Time

Working on my encaustics today. The apple is a laser transfer, and I plan on painting the branch, leaves, and possibly highlights on the apple in oil paint.

Did a laser jet transfer on the other one I’m working on, but I’m not sure I like the position. I think I’m gonna scrape the spider off and add one slightly bigger and a little more lower and left.

“Loki and Idun’s Apple” at the end of the night:

“Anansi” piece – spider resized & repositioned. I think this one looks much better:

Poppy Dreams has been sold!

I was very excited to find on arriving to Art St. Louis this past Saturday night for “Art St. Louis XXIX, The Exhibition”, that one of my three pieces on exhibit had sold, bought by one of the fellow artists in the show.  A true complement!

Folktale Series/ Poppy Dreams, 2013 – Mixed media encaustic on panel, 4” x 4”

 

Whew! What a week!

Really – what a couple of weeks!  The past two weeks have been the busiest of the semester for me so far.  Gearing up for our guest artist visit with Jennifer Meanley on 4/8 and 4/9, I kicked it into high gear (well, even higher gear) over the last two weeks, culminating in a weekend spent actually sleeping in the studio to make sure I finished as many pieces as humanly possible before my critique on Tuesday, 4/9.  I texted my husband that I was coming home when everything was done Tuesday night and his response was: “And you are?” 😀  I finished 4 new encaustic pieces (mixed media works made by layering heated and smoothed wax and spray paint, drawing, oil paint or collage) and made significant progress on 4 others (a couple of which, depending on how I feel after a little more time, may actually be complete – sometimes I have to sit on them a little bit to decide).

Jennifer Meanley was our guest artist for the spring semester.  Her art can be viewed here:  http://www.jennifermeanley.com/.  On Monday, she gave a lecture discussing the history of her work and some of the themes that are interwoven throughout her pieces.  Ideas of home and place in physical or mental space and nostalgia are very important to her work, the sensation of longing for something no longer present and how a person carries it within one’s memory.  Her paintings and collages seamlessly balance simultaneous color and simultaneous contrast, placing complimentary hues parallel to each other, as well as light next to dark.  She is very interested in what happens when objects meet and what happens to the space in between, using the tension of the contrasts in hue and tone to adjust the speed at which the viewer’s eye travels through the piece.  She is the first artist I recall listening to that discussed color in terms of tempo and velocity, rather than just temperature.  By the end of the lecture, my brain was humming with so many things to think about that I was afraid it would just short-circuit and not be able to process it all.  I can’t claim to have understood all of the theoretical principles discussed in her lecture (or my critique for that matter), but if I can integrate even half of the ideas into how I think about making my own work, my pieces, especially the oil paintings, will likely improve dramatically.

In total, for my critique, I showed 3 large figurative pieces (at various levels of completion) from my Dialectic Personae* series and about 15 encaustic pieces (some finished & some in progress).  I wish I’d thought to take a picture of the wall with everything displayed together, but I got caught up in other preparations.  It was a really good feeling seeing how many pieces there were all together.

Jenn’s main critique of the Dialectic Personae pieces was that they looked like I was really trying to show that I know how to paint, but that the figures themselves came across as being handled in a manner that was “too self-conscious”.  The viewer really needs to question just what the heck is happening in the image, rather than seeing a couple of reasonably well-painted figures.  She referenced the artist Isabel Bishop for me to research, looking at the unselfconscious observation of urban working class women beginning in the 1930s, as in “Tidying Up” http://www.imamuseum.org/collections/artwork/tidying-bishop-isabel and the weird, slightly creepy, yet almost Renaissance style work of John Currin for the odd but beautiful factor (http://aphelis.net/john-currin-paintings/).  “Be weirder” will now be my new painting credo!  Jenn also suggested that I tear back into the color of the pieces to help make them pop, make them more energized, and guide the eye around each piece better.  I had taken a break on working on these larger pieces this semester to work on the encaustics so I could feel like I was making some progress after being stuck on the slower paintings for the past year or two, but I feel like I have enough distance now from the bigger works that I can dig in and make some major changes.

Getting closer to completion

I considered this finished before the critique, but am now considering digging back into the piece to work on the color harmonies.

Jenn also suggested that I look at Art Nouveau artists (http://www.nga.gov/feature/nouveau/exhibit_intro.shtm), including Gustave Klimt (http://www.klimt.com/), for ways of blending abstract design with more realistic figures.  That may be a way to incorporate some of the layering techniques and design choices from my encaustic pieces into my oil paintings.  A lot of thoughts to digest, but I feel like this will be a stepping stone to much improved work.

*The Dialectic Personae pieces are based on the idea that many of us live dual lives – we present ourselves one way during the day (i.e. I am an administrative assistant) and another way at night (wacky MFA student).  I have done several modelling sessions with women who do roller derby, burlesque, or polesque (pole-dancing combined with burlesque) and have 3 paintings started, at varying levels of completion.