encaustic in wyoming

victoria franck-wetsch (1-2), alex keenan (3), meggan stordahl (4-5), the amazing view outside the studio (6), peggy prugh(7) meggan stordahl(8), i love pretty palettes (9), peggy prugh's coffee drawing (10), alex keenan (11), chris wimberg (12), i love wonderful workspaces, in this case meggan stordahl's (13), two exquisite corpse (14-15), great drawings by alex keenan, which came from a in-class markmaking exercises (16)

i recently returned home from a wonderful week teaching an encaustic workshop at the art association in jackson, wyoming. the landscape in wyoming is so amazingly beautiful as is the art association's facilities!! i've never taught in such a well equipped facility and i was extremely impressed by the friendly and helpful staff as well.

the workshop combined my markmaking workshop with my 5-day intensive encaustic workshop--both workshops incorporate fiber in some way. i had a small but enthusiastic and fun group and everyone had an awesome time with creative breakthroughs had by all. i even managed to finish 3 small pieces during the workshop (to be posted in the near future).

what i love about teaching workshops is that all of the participants come with different strengths and abilities and each builds on those things with the new tools that they are learning. i love to see how each person translates new techniques and interprets them in their own visual language. victoria franck-wetsch developed a technique where she used the razor blade as drawing tool, which slowly revealed collaged images under white encaustic paint. meggan stordahl has a wonderful sense of texture and materials and used the encaustic medium to collage these materials together. chris wimberg's map-like paintings reveal her great sense of color and pattern. peggy prugh does such beautiful line work and in this workshop drew with coffee and a chop stick over layers of medium! alex keenan has an excellent sense of color and pattern and experimented with the encaustic to create color fields. all did great work and i look forward to seeing what they do next!