Author: lauramchugh

I did these monotypes a couple of weeks ago to work through some anxiety about my money and retirement.

Today, I was in Omaha NE to attend the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting and tend to some of my investments. The public art at the Qwest Convention Center was eerily similar to two of my prints…not sure what to make of it.

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This weekend, I attended the International Encaustic Artists (IEA) annual retreat. Held at the Hidden Valley Retreat Center in Carmel Valley, we had spectacular weather (85-90F). There were panel discussions, a great presentation by Richard Frumass of R&F Paints on pigments and the making of encaustic paints, and even a Project Runway competition!

I have long wanted to do encaustic work and took a great workshop in January from Eileen Goldenberg. There were almost forty extremely high calibre encaustic artists at this retreat and among them, I felt the work I brought to share was quite amateurish (or, let’s be kind and say – in its infancy!)

Today’s presentations on techniques by Lissa Rankin and Miles Conrad blew me away. Lissa is such a pro – handling the brushes with the confidence that comes from years of working in the medium. Miles is very meticulous and focused on the vision of the piece, and showed us how to build three-dimensional shapes and adhere them securely to the frame.

So, by noon today I felt like though I haven’t even started to work in two dimensions with encaustic, which is what attracted me to the medium to begin with – all the possibilities of collaging and layering – now I want to do three dimensional work.

I call this first true encaustic “Emerging.” It echoes my desire to work with the form of the circle and adds to earlier two-dimensional print works the ability to explore the concavity and that precious space between the underside of a gently dipped shape and the surface it rests upon.

Someone dear to me gave me a little present recently. The present was wrapped in beautiful swirled paper that I believe may be handmade. (A friend at a treasure mapping event in early January told me how she made marbleized paper that looks very similar to this.)

I liked the colors – olive green, tangerine orange and a sultry lemon yellow, so I mixed these colors to make some prints on my press. I got inspired to cut out a circle of the saved wrapping paper to incorporate into the piece.

Go to the link to Recent Art Pieces in the right sidebar to see all the prints. This is one of four monotypes in that color family. I’ve done six more sets in other colors.

My other favorite is this one:

I was finally able to get out to my studio and work with my print press, Conrad. We created eight monotype prints – four in a pink and green color scheme, and four more in blue and purple. I used Daler-Rowney Pearlescent Liquid Acrylic Artist’s Inks for the handwork. Some prints were two pulls.

I’ve finally updated my website. I was long overdue to receive the upgrade from LiveBooks and I had let my URL, www.artbylornadoone.com, expire. So, it was meant to be that I now have www.lauramchugh.com for my website.

New work from December has been added, including the index card art pieces (20) and 5 new prints I made for the BlueSpace show in early December with Conrad Whitehall, my partner press.