People & Places: Brenden Spivey, Victoria Foster Harrison & Bettina Egli Sennhauser
Brendan Spivey, Space Dementia (detail), 30” x 24”, acrylic, R&F Pigment Stick, and oil pastel
To begin the second round of "People & Places" we direct the spotlight back towards creators in various stages of their careers. This week we focus on the Midwest, West, and an artist from beyond our borders. We get to know our paint even better when we see it in action, and there is nothing more satisfying than seeing the results when it leaves our factory and enters your studio.
BRENDEN SPIVEY / MIDWEST
Brendan Spivey, Emancipation, 40” x 30”, mixed media and R&F Pigment Stick
Brenden Spivey is an emerging artist in Columbus, Ohio. He is drawn to the process and the meditative state that engulfs him when painting. Brenden does not have any formal training in painting and considers his work outsider art. He began with fluid paint pouring and found his voice as an artist. Brenden masterfully poured paint onto gallery-wrapped canvases in ways that showed his careful and methodical nature.
To expand his visual language Brenden immersed himself into abstract art in galleries, museums, and his own private collection. His artwork began to take on exciting forms when he listened to music. Oil pastels and R&F Pigment Sticks allowed him more freedom to express himself on canvas. This is what began to shape his newly found signature geometric style.
"I choose to use R&F Pigment Sticks because of the thick luscious marks they make on the canvas. I can complete an entire gesture without the need to reload a brush. The range of available colors allows me to work in my signature styling using primary colors but also pivot into the darker and richer earth tones I am making part of my body of work. There is a freedom that I feel when using these gestural tools to create. Oftentimes when I cannot figure out what the final touch is, it is R&F Pigment Sticks that help me cross the finish line."
VICTORIA FOSTER HARRISON / WEST
Victoria lives and works in Port Townsend, Washington. Her encaustic monotypes include a combination of "action and quiet." Her encaustic collages incorporate urban landscape, urban photographs, mark-making on rice paper, and textural monotypes. Victoria exhibits her work at multiple galleries in the Pacific Northwest and teaches in-person courses in her Curly Girl Art Studio, online, and through the Winslow Art Center.
Victoria Foster Harrison, Memory Wave, 22” x 9” x 2”, encaustic monotypes, handmade paper, found wood.
"I have used R&F encaustic for many years and depend on the reliability of their smooth consistency along with an extensive variety of color choices for my students. Holding the rectangle chunks in my hands, I lay down color in lines and free-form shapes, using the glorious paints on the warmed aluminum palette. The 16”x16” R&F palette is my favorite choice of heated palettes on the market today. The square format is appealing and is useful for a variety of sizes and formats. The extra-thick aluminum assures consistent temperatures, essential to maintaining consistency for new creations. R&F Gesso is utilized as a “grit” on the back of my prints, which allows adhesion for mounting and also creates a protective barrier from acrylic adhesives."
BETTINA EGLI SENNHAUSER / SWITZERLAND
Bettina Egli Sennhauser, Transition, nine 4” cubes, encaustic on wooden cubes
Bettina Egli Sennhauser lives in Switzerland and is primarily a self-taught artist inspired by different tutors at art academies in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States. She is passionate about exploring and experimenting with natural materials such as beeswax, marble dust, and lime putty (Venetian Plaster), sands, stone powders, and loose pigments to mirror the beauty of natural organic surfaces. Her works have been shown in Switzerland, Italy, and at the juried show of the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown in 2019. In 2018, she was one of the founders of the European Encaustic Artists Community.
"I feel privileged to live in Switzerland, but it still is an encaustic desert as the technique is very rarely used in Europe. Finding appropriate tools and materials requires lots of research as they are not readily available like in the United States. The decision to take the trip across the Atlantic and attend the IEC in 2018 to meet like-minded artists gave my life a different twist. I was most intrigued by Richard Frumess' passionate presentation on color, and a year later, I visited R&F in Kingston. Seeing Richard's first paint mill and hearing lots of interesting and funny stories about R&F's history confirmed once more that passion is what makes the world go round. There is lots of it in each of R&F's color blocks, which makes them unique.”
Next week’s focus will be on artists from the East, North, and South.
Keep painting.