Instructor: Debra Claffey
Monday - Tuesday
June 1 - 2
10am - 4pm
2 sessions

 A two-day course in on how to use line with wax. We’ll cover what drawing mediums work best on top of wax, in wax layers, or under wax on your ground. We’ll explore the many ways to make a line, to find a line, or to reveal a line. We’ll also experiment with the different qualities of lines and how to make your line expressive and personal to your work.

Debra Claffey’s paintings in oil, encaustic, and mixed media concentrate on abstracted plant and foliage forms as expressions of the human dilemma. Her experience in horticulture adds a scientific perspective to her aesthetic appreciation of the natural world. With the plant kingdom as muse, Claffey’s work employs direct observation of nature to comment on the critical relationship between humans and plants. Claffey’s paintings have been exhibited across New England and have won several awards, the most recent being a 2025 Recognition Award from Juror Toby Sisson at the Bristol Art Museum’s Rock, Paper, Scissors and the Juror’s Award from Joanne Mattera in Anything But Flat at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, in Truro, MA.. Juror Katherine French recognized her work with an Honorable Mention in Catamount Art’s Arts Connect exhibition in St. Johnsbury, Vt in 2022. Claffey received two Artist Entrepreneurial Grants from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2011 and 2020. She won the Bank of New Hampshire Award in the 50th Annual Exhibition at the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, NH. She holds a BFA in painting from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and an Associate's Degree in Horticultural Technology from the University of New Hampshire. She has been Past-President of both the New Hampshire Women’s Caucus for Art and New England Wax. She exhibits with a four-artist collective named Elemental, which focuses on environmental issues. Claffey currently teaches online and in her Maine studio.