I was 10 years old and bored sitting in the engineering office above a sawmill in Kinzua, Eastern Oregon waiting for Dad to finish working on the mill’s upgrade which I knew would be days. So I found a very large piece of drafting paper, looked out the huge windows and drew the entire mill for the next 3 days. That was the beginning of my commercial art career which spanned over 35 years. I grew up with a dark room in my bathroom so I began photography at an early age as well. I took all the art classes at high school and with a great deal of persuasion managed to get into technical drawing classes….as the only girl of course.
Rockford College in Illinois offered a good fine arts course which I took but I really wanted to get into the commercial arena. I found a trades school in Switzerland who offered the exact disciplines I was looking for. So I went off to Switzerland to learn the language and take the exam to get into the school. Fortunately I was allowed a dictionary, and I passed and took up the graphic design course.
I eventually wound up back in Portland, Oregon in the newspaper and printing business before going freelance for them and agencies. I specialized in industrial catalogs, brochures, logos and flyers. My marriage took me to the bottom of the world on a sheep farm in New Zealand. I discovered I was the only commercial artist for 200 miles and I was in the heart of the tourist industry. I worked on everything from menus, hotel promotions, the local aluminum plant maintenance manuals, meat company annual reports and fashion ads for the local newspaper. Specializing was not an option.
After my husbands fatal tragic farm accident, I found myself saddled with 2 kids, 5 dogs, 3 cats and 2000 sheep to look after. The commercial art business had to shut down so I could run the farm for the next 25 years. Upon retiring back to the states 10 years ago and looking after an ancient mom, I decided to return to fine arts. After all here was my old studio in my old home almost intact. Mother had never moved a thing! The paints had dried up but everything else was there! I have had fun since then taking classes both here and in England where my daughter now lives. It gave me a chance to dabble in various mediums and I have discovered the wax mediums both cold and hot.
Hot wax or encaustic dates back to the Egyptians and is considered one of the oldest forms of painting. With modernization of the medium it has expanded greatly adding cold wax as well. The basic principle is the pigment is carried by a wax medium instead of oil or water. The wax cools or solidifies to form the image. With hot wax your painting tool is brush, heat gun and blowtorch. With cold wax the preferred tool is the common pot scraper! Plus any number of workshop and kitchen gadgets that form impressions and marks.
These mediums suit my preference of interpretive landscapes and abstracts. Painting with a blowtorch is not a super detailed art medium! Plus I add the odd sketching to the mix to keep my skill level in tact. Arizona landscapes add so many different images to my library and I look forward to capturing them plus the thousands I have collected in my travels.
