"A Long Way From Antigonish" SOLD

My painting "A Long Way From Antigonish" was selected for first Prize in the Mixed Media and Graphics category at the 2008 Art Association of Northern New York's annual show in Sackets Harbor. This is two years running now that I have had the good fortune to receive this honor.

This years esteemed judge was Mr. Bill Delevan. Mr. Delevan is the owner and director of the Delevan Center and the Delevan Gallery in Syracuse. He is a long time supporter of the arts in Central New York.

* This Painting is available for purchase. $500 THis painting is now in the collection of CFE CRedit Union, Lake Mary, Florida.

GYPSY RED

OK, this is long over due. I have to pimp out my friends and favorite folk band, Gypsy Red. John and Cherie Sardella of Parish, NY play what could be described as their own brand of progressive folk music. They have over 80 original songs to their credit. The music is a spirtitual journey for the soul. John on 12 string guitar and Cherie's vocals are a great collaboration of love and good energy. We are happy to announce they will once again play ART IN THE SQUARE, Saturday September 27. http://artinthesquare.blogspot.com/

Their CD, "Comming Home" is avaiable at Abbott's Fine Art and Framing or on-line at http://abbottsstudio.com/webstore/index.php?cat_path=6&PHPSESSID=bf0165569544f5ed2fc3db3bcfab417b

Mountain Mist

"Mountain Mist" a wonderful collection of Adirondack landscape paintings on view through July 31 at the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts, Blue Mountain Lake, NY. http://www.adk-arts.org/ The exhibition is comprised of orginal watercolors and acrylics by Constantia, NY artist Jeanne Dupre.

Jeanne's paintings show case her love of the outdoors and are scenes that she and husband Dick are intimately familiar with. They spend a lot of time hiking and kayaking in the Adirondack region. It is on these outings, that Jeanne gathers inspiration and photographic references for her paintings.

Debe and I have done much of her framing for well over twenty years and have watched her career take off. This is a fabulous show for her and I highly recommend stopping by the art center if you are up that way!

Bravo Jeanne!

PS. Jeanne's paintings, prints and note cards are also available through http://www.abbottsstudio.com/

JUST IN - Jeanne won the POPULAR VOTE from attendees and patrons at the Adirondack Theme Show, Arts Center, Old Forge. Congrats!

Why Buy Art?

This year has been some what puzzling. The economy is supposed to be in the tank, no pun intended. We all shudder every time we fill up at the gas pump. The news is filled with one depressing story after another about the housing market, the price of food, etc, and yet we are selling paintings. I don't know if this will hold up, but we are naturally hopeful.

The number of total paintings sold year-to-date is actually down a little, but the sales figures are way up. The people coming in to look at art and purchase, are looking at the investment grade work. Paintings by the more established regionalist artists. We have been selling paintings in the $1,400.00 - $2,500.00 range. At a time when people are cutting back, it seems they are still looking to make purchases that make them feel good, beautify their homes and represent an investment that may potentially out perform most other investment options.

Sales of paintings at Sotheby's, Christie's and other big auction houses remain impressively high. A record was set recently for a painting by a living artist. A Jasper Johns painting sold for seven million dollars. The year before a David Smith sculpture sold for a record 23.8 million. World wide art sales are climbing to record highs every year as new wealth is built in previously depressed countries. Moscow now has more millionaires than any city in the world and they are buying art. There are dozens of similar stories and they collectively are driving the art market to astonishing levels.

Obviously we are not dealing with multi million dollar paintings here in Central Square. We are dealing however, with good quality regional art that represents decent investment potential. I am not advocating buying art strictly as an investment. Buy it because you love it, because you connect in some way to an artist or a particular piece of work. On the other hand, an individual with an interest in art, who wants to learn, can easily begin to build a collection without spending a fortune. A collection that will appreciate in value. I do not recommend prints, although there can be some potential there, the market has been flooded with prints over the last 20 years to the point that values are down in general. High quality original works are more affordable than many people realize and are far and away the better investment!

I am frequently asked to frame fifty dollar prints with expensive mouldings and multiple mats and conservation glass. They look great and a lot of people are perfectlty happy, even though they now have a three hundred and fifty dollar frame on a fifty dollar print. I think the mindset among a lot of folks is that they can't afford to buy original art. Some people may be intimidated and afraid to trust their own taste. They may not realize there are many artists whose original paintings can be purchased for under five hundred dollars.

Most galleries have approval plans and lay-away plans that make it very easy to purchase a piece of art. Unless you are buying classic cars, when was the last time you bought a car and twenty years later it was worth four or five times what you paid for it? You should remember of course that art work is not a liquid asset. Unless you are able to buy at the top of the market you may not be able to sell immediately. Artwork represents a long term investment.

Vistit an art gallery soon! Fall in love with art and begin your collection. I do have to issue the following disclaimer however, "COLLECTING ART CAN BE ADDICTING!"

HAVE FUN! BUY ART!

3rd Annual Art In The Square

September 27, 2008. Advertising is already out in the CNY Summer Guide. Gypsy Red is booked again and two new artists and two art groups have contacted us about participating in this years event. AITS is growing every year! JOIN US! http://artinthesquare.blogspot.com/

Encaustic

My Take

Over the last 20 years I have been asked about the encaustic medium. What is it? How do you use it? So here we go, I will attempt to explain this mysterious medium and how I came to use it.

Currently enjoying renewed interest among artists for its versatility and permanence, encaustic remains a mystery to many people. I have seen looks of bewilderment on the faces of people looking at my paintings. Even relatively art savvy collectors and other artists are largely clueless.

The term encaustic comes from the Greek, enkaustikos, which means to heat or burn in.

Wikipedia defines encaustic as, hot wax painting using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added.

One of the oldest mediums, encaustic can be traced back to ancient Greek warships and funeral portraits in Egypt.

Jasper Johns pioneered modern era encaustic painting during the 1950's and 60's and many of his famous flag and target paintings were done in the wax based medium. When I first began experimenting with encaustic there was little information available other than the occasional reference to Johns. This was before the information age, before the internet, pre Wikipedia and Google.

In order to paint with encaustic, the wax must be heated to a liquid or semi liquid state to work with it, thus making it somewhat cumbersome and may help explain why it fell out of common use for so long. Modern tools such as hot plates, heat guns, irons etc. make working with encaustic much more practical.

I use the term paint somewhat loosely. Some artists do use the medium in a fairly straight forward method of painting with a brush or more often palette knife. The medium kept warm in muffn tins on a hot plate or some other similar way to keep the wax liquid.

Many contemporary artists, myself included apply the medium in a variety of untraditional ways, often experimental. The nature of encaustic allows the artist to become very physical in application.

The methods I have developed are unique and as far as I know I am the only artist using it quite the way I do. I will save my technique discussion for a future workshop or post.

Until recently, commercially manufactured paint was not available. Anyone wanting to work in encaustic had to pretty much make their own. Considering the lack of reference material available, you were left to your own experimentation.

I stumbled onto encaustic quite by chance. One summer day back around 1988 I was visiting the studio of my friend and mentor *George Welch. We sat discussing art over a cup of tea as we often did. I mentioned that I had been experimenting with melting crayons and some of the interesting things I was discovering. George immediately piped in with the term encaustic. That was the first time I had heard of it and that was the beginning of my now 20 year adventure with the medium.

It turns out George had crates full of encaustic bars and sticks in his basement that he had inherited from a friend who had made them back in the 1950's. He had saved them thinking that someday he would use them but decided that he would just as soon give them to me. George was a prolific artist. I helped him out with some of his framing needs and he gave me art work,and this time four crates of pigmented wax.

In 1992 I won " Best Work on Paper" at the Canastota Small Scale Show for "The Reach" a collage piece with encaustic as the primary medium. The work was also featured in "Hot Process", at the Manlius Library, an Associated Artist show with Enameling by George and Marcia Ferber. The whole show was dedicated to painting that required heat in the process. In 1994 I had my first gallery exhibition of encaustic paintings at the Roberta Wood Gallery in Dewitt, NY. The show was favorably reviewed by Sherry Chayatt, then art critic for the Post Standard.

I have continued to explore the medium off and on in the subsequent years and have had several gallery shows, participated in numerous group shows and been fortunate to win some awards for the work along the way.

I have been happy to see other artists jump into the medium. It’s always interesting to see what other artists are doing with encaustics. This past winter the Delevan Gallery in Syracuse featured a fabulous exhibition of encaustic paintings by Lew Graham.

There is no question that encaustic is being widely embraced by many contemporary artists. I believe, that aside from it’s inherent characteristics, versatility and permanence, the fact that it is now commercially available, and that there is reference material out there, explains in my view the recent surge in popularity of this obscure medium.

To learn more about encaustic, I recommend, The Art of Encaustic Painting, contemporary expression in the ancient medium of pigmented wax, by Joanne Mattera. This is the first book I am aware of dedicated to the medium.

And
http://www.rfpaints.com

ARKELL MUSEUM

Most of us living in central New York who have an interest in art are well aquainted with venues such as the Everson Museum in Syracuse, Munson-Williams Proctor in Utica, the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn and others. These are of course all outstanding institutions, with impressive collections. They certainly deserve their lofty standing in their respective communities. There is however, a small museum in Canajoharie that has a collection of American art, that is, at least in my opinion, every bit their equal. Some might argue more impressive.
Yet when I mention the Arkell to people in conversation, most seem to be unfamiliar with it or may have heard of it but never visited.

If you have driven to Albany on the New York State thruway, you have driven right past it. In fact you can see it clearly from the highway. This Museum houses a collection that includes Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Georgia O'Keefe, Mary Cassat and on and on. The founder of Beech Nut Foods, Mr. Bartlett Arkell amassed one of the largest collections of Hudson River School artists as well as a virtual who's who in American art from the 19th and early 20th century.

Mr. Arkell not only left his collection but also a considerable endowment to care for the work and grow the collection. He also played an instrumental role in the Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester where he had a summer home, but that is a subject for another post.

I first learned of the Arkell about 20 years ago and have visited many times. I have never been disappointed. The Museum has just completed a major renovation and addition. I highly recommend a visit if you are over that way or even make a day of it. It is well worth the drive!

To learn more- http://www.arkellmuseum.org/