Instructor: Richard Frumess & Lisa Pressman
Monday - Wednesday
June 3 - 5
10am - 4pm
3 Sessions
Monochromatic paintings are a very useful tool for learning just how far you can go with an individual color, both its versatility and its limits. Using Pigment Sticks, you will explore different ways of handling the paint to bring out different aspects of that color.
It can stop there or go on. Seeing the limits of a color can lead to a methodical choice of a second color to expand those limits. And that leads to the methodical choice of a third color, and so on in the building of the harmonic (or dissonant) color structure of a painting. Emphasis will be on turning the ideas developed through color charts and the different ways of categorizing colors into paintings.
For example, one categorization is opacity. The opacity or translucency of a pigment affects every aspect of color relationship and color mixing. The understanding of this and other categories not only helps to resolve problems of composition but also enriches the toolbox of expressive possibilities.
Richard Frumess has been manufacturing artist paint commercially since 1982 when he began making encaustic paint for Torch Arts Supplies in New York City. In 1988 he founded R&F Handmade Paints and two years later developed Pigment Sticks, R&F’s brand of oil sticks. In the intervening years, he conducted a series of comprehensive tests on the properties of encaustic as well as doing research into its history and contemporary use.
Withdrawing from the running of the company in 2014, allowed him the freedom to investigate the underlying principles of the color line that had been developed intuitively over the years by him and R&F’s staff. The workshops that have evolved from this exploration are intended to ground color theory in the materials of color itself.
Lisa Pressman’s career has been marked by exploring the rich, expressive potential of medium and materiality She has explored a range of processes, among them oil painting, encaustic, cold wax, and mixed-media collage. Her work is abstract, conceptual, and process-driven, defined by marks, forms, colors and patterns. The artist creates works that are evocative rather than descriptive.
She has an MFA degree in Painting from Bard College. She has since exhibited at the national level in solo and group exhibitions, and her work is held in numerous private and public collections. Pressman is represented by Susan Eley Fine Arts in New York, Addington Gallery in Chicago, and Slate Gallery in Telluride, Colorado.
A highly respected arts educator, Lisa maintains a vigorous teaching program. She worked on the faculty of the former Art Institute of NY, a visiting professor at Pratt Institute and other universities. Pressman has taught workshops in France, Mexico, Italy and the US. She is renowned for her knowledge of encaustic, cold wax processes, concept-based courses, and presents annually at the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown, MA. She is a core instructor for R&F Handmade Paints and co-founder of C2C Arts Project, a teaching and resource website. As a teacher, she facilitates each student’s voice, emphasizing the awareness of the source of what they are doing and why, and the medium and visual language with which they can most effectively express their artistic vision.