People & Places: Tracy Penn, Alteronce Gumby & Shelley Jean
Tracy Penn, When We Get By, 36” x 48”, encaustic, oil, and up-cycled material on panel.
We continue "People & Places" this week with a group of gifted artists from the North, East, and South. We begin in the North, where we are captivated by Tracy Penn's layered surfaces. Tracy's work combines encaustic and found materials, giving a second life and mesmerizing texture to discarded items. In the East, we look at Alteronce Gumby's geometric, colorful, and abstract works. Gumby’s paintings examine culture through the use of color, often packed with rich hue and touch. Shelley Jean lives, works, and teaches in Florida. Much of her artwork reflects the landscape surrounding her. You can feel the ocean topography in her brushwork and use of color.
Tracy Penn, On the Other Side, 18” x 18”, encaustic, oil, and up-cycled material on panel.
TRACY PENN / NORTH
Tracy Penn studied at the Art Students League of New York, the International Center of Photography, and the New York School for Interior Design. In previous careers, she worked in marketing at MoMA and museum education at the Guggenheim. Her works are made with encaustic and found material. She uses up-cycled material to give a second life to the discarded and to create more environmental value in her work. These fragments add a strong textural component to her paintings. Her work has been shown in galleries throughout New York and Connecticut and is part of private collections across the country.
"I work exclusively with R&F encaustic paint and Pigment Sticks because I like the color range and find R&F products to be more highly pigmented than other brands. The high level of pigmentation allows me to achieve my desired color, and by mixing the paint with encaustic medium, I can extend the paint. I use R&F Pigment Sticks to accentuate the distorted grid lines which are often found in my work. These grid lines are created from up-cycled material. I mix Pigment Sticks with R&F Blending Medium and then cover my entire piece with the mixture (this is always a bit scary). I then wipe away the excess, so the Pigment Stick only remains in the grid pattern. With R&F Pigment Sticks I can highlight both the textural quality of my work and the grid pattern."
Alteronce Gumby, My President’s Orange, but my painting is still Blue, 58” x 70”, oil on panel.
ALTERONCE GUMBY / EAST
Alteronce Gumby lives and works in New York City. His artistic practice includes painting, ceramics, installation, and performance. In his recent exhibition “Catching the Holy Ghost” at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, Gumby explored color as it refers to transcendence from the physical to the idea of the spiritual. Painting becomes the artists’ undeniable language of awareness, as an act of transcendence, offering a form of liberation and tranquility through color.
Gumby graduated from Yale School of Art with an MFA in Painting and Printmaking in 2016. He has won notable awards such as the Austrian American Foundation/ Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts and the Robert Reed Memorial Scholarship. He currently has a solo exhibition at Parrasch Heijnen Gallery.
"I've been using R&F Pigments sticks since 2010. They were a complete game-changer for me throughout my art education and continue to surprise me today in the studio. I've made many trips to Kingston to learn about the products and take workshops. Very impressed with the passion and dedication the R&F team has to make quality products."
Shelley Jean, Golden Gate, 16” x 16”, encaustic and oil.
SHELLEY JEAN / SOUTH
Shelley is an artist and educator in Florida. She studied at Florida School of the Arts and graduated from the University of South Florida with a B.S in Art Education. She has taught in the public and private sectors for over 28 years. Shelley is a member of the CIVA, Artist Registry, and president of Florida Wax, a chapter of IEA. She teaches encaustic painting at the Maitland Museum of Art and History and Mount Dora Center for the Arts, as well as at her Secret Place Studio in Orlando, Florida.
"Having lived in Florida my entire life I have always been within an hour's drive of the Atlantic Ocean or Gulf. There is a certain freedom that comes with understanding this, even if it is subconscious. The water is healing and inspiring. I tend to always lean into its colors for my paintings; it's in my soul. It's what brings me peace. I had already been teaching encaustic for a few years but it wasn’t until I was able to go to Kingston and take a week-long Advanced Teacher Training workshop with Cynthia, Laura, Richard, and Kelly that I truly began to expound on my studio and teaching practices working exclusively with this medium. Since then I have traveled the world teaching encaustic and it has been an honor to have the support of R&F and represent a company that works with a spirit of excellence in all that they create."