What has Ellen Hedfield Art been up to this fall? Both artwork and artist have been noodling around the western US… read on.
Heading Out the Mother Road was accepted into the 50th Annual Rocky Mountain National Watermedia exhibition at the Center for the Arts, Evergreen (CAE), Colorado, which ran from September 21 – October 28, 2023. Only 57 paintings were accepted from nearly 500 submissions, so I’m pretty excited to have a painting in this exhibit. CAE puts out a beautiful exhibit catalog of all the accepted works.
Encaustic! What’s up with that? I participated in an encaustic painting workshop in October 2023 to build some more skills in painting with – yes – beeswax. The workshop was taught by Linda Nunes at the Sacramento Fine Arts Center. Encaustic medium is really cool – it’s actually purified beeswax mixed with some resin, and if you like, with pigments. Heat it and paint with it when it’s all melty. Fuse and manipulate the encaustic using a heat gun or heat lamp, or – yes indeed – a blow torch, (not for me, thank you very much). You can collage with it, leave the top surface rough or smooth, add pigments atop the wax, texture the surface while it’s still warm, and many other cool things. I’m thinking of combining encaustic over small watercolor paintings to get a beautiful, moody, luminous finish. Stay tuned!
The artist has been traveling around this fall, finding inspiration in the eastern Sierra mountains of Inyo County, California, the coastline and mountains of Ventura County, California, and the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona. Road trips serve as important inspiration for my subject matter, and I never know what I might find along the side of the road…
