Abstract Paintings

A vibrant cobalt blue and bright turquoise encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel accented with subtle orange and red details. Signed and titled on verso. Joanne Matt...

Mint green and burgundy red stripes are bright and colorful against a luminous cobalt blue background. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’s paintings can be described...

Vibrant mint green and sky blue encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting accented with subtle gold and red details on birch panel. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’s ...

A bright multicolored painting with lime green, periwinkle, golden orange, yellow and burgundy red stripes against a luminous coral background. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Jo...

Bright pale lavender encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel with pale mint blue in the background and light purple along the edges. Signed and titled on verso. Joanne...

A bright, vibrant teal blue encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel accented with bright blue edges. Signed and titled on the verso. Joanne Mattera’s paintings can be ...

A bright multicolored painting with lime green, periwinkle, golden orange, yellow and burgundy red stripes against a luminous light aqua blue background. Signed, dated and titled on ...

A square, vibrant iridescent pink and bright red encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting accented with coral, peach and orange details on birch panel. Signed, dated and titled on vers...

A deep, bright cobalt blue encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting with light purple and vibrant teal accents on birch panel. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’s paintings can be described as lush minimalism, the work is chromatically rich and compositionally reductive. Each painting in the ongoing Silk Road series is a small color field achieved by layers of translucent wax paint applied at right angles. The series, began in 2005, was inspired by the iridescent hues of slubbed silk, hence the title, but very quickly evolved into a more expansive exploration of color. In plying the richness of the encaustic paint against the austerity of a very subtle grid the artist sets in motion a dynamic in which color and texture jostle for primacy. A decade and almost 300 paintings later, the artist is still enthralled with this exploration. Mattera is the foremost expert in the field of encaustic painting and is the founder and former director of the International Encaustic Conference. Her artwork is in the collections of The New Britain Museum of Contemporary Art, US Embassies (Slovenia and Poland), US State Department, Bank of America, and Norwegian Cruise Lines, to name a few as well as numerous private collections. Mattera writes a contemporary art blog, she is a frequent guest speaker and curator and is a member of American Abstract Artists (NYC). The artist lives and works in MA and in NYC. Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments are added. The word comes originally from the Greek word “enkaustikis” meaning to “burn in” and the process dates back to the 5th century. The liquid or paste is applied to a surface —usually prepared wood. Metal tools...

A multicolored painting with bright yellow, aqua, burgundy and light violet stripes against a vivid orange background. Joanne Mattera’s paintings can be described as lush minimalis...

This is a square, vibrant peach, pink and pale orange encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel with soft periwinkle and pale lilac highlights and light purple edges. Sig...

Light aqua and green encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel with a bright yellow edge. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’s paintings are can be descri...

Vibrant metallic silver and bright teal blue encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel accented with bright blue edges. Signed and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’s pain...

Pale lavender, pinky purple encaustic (pigmented beeswax) square painting on birch panel with light lilac details in and light teal blue along the edges. Signed and titled on verso. ...

A pale lavender purple encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel with soft, pale periwinkle blue in the background and light purple along the edges. Signed, dated and tit...

A bright green encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel with yellow in the background and peach along the edges. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’s pai...

A luminous pale blue encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel accented with bright coral along the edge of the panel. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’...

A vibrant orange, yellow and light green encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel accented with lime green edges. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’s pa...

A vibrant turquoise blue encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel accented with a paler shade of blue along the edges. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera...

This is a vibrant teal blue and light green encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel is accented with luminous lime green details along the edge. Signed, dated and title...

Silk Road 261 is an aqua green and pale yellow encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel with an aqua edge. Signed, dated and titled on verso. Joanne Mattera’s paintings...

This is a vibrant red orange encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting with light reddish orange and faint yellow accents on birch panel. Signed, date...

This is a square, vibrant orange and purple encaustic (pigmented beeswax) painting on birch panel accented with bright pink and subtle gold details. Signed, dated and titled on verso...

Summer is Joanne Mattera’s time to work on paper. When she is fully engaged, as she has been with Riz, that time slides well into autumn. These are paintings on paper, oil and wax on...

Summer is Joanne Mattera’s time to work on paper. When she is fully engaged, as she has been with Riz, that time slides well into autumn. These are paintings on paper, oil and wax on...

Summer is Joanne Mattera’s time to work on paper. When she is fully engaged, as she has been with Riz, that time slides well into autumn. These are paintings on paper, oil and wax on...

Summer is Joanne Mattera’s time to work on paper. When she is fully engaged, as she has been with Riz, that time slides well into autumn. These are paintings on paper, oil and wax on...

Lush Minimalism Silk Road is chromatically juicy and compositionally reductive. Each painting in this ongoing series is a small, luminous color field composed with layers of translu...

Lush Minimalism Silk Road is chromatically juicy and compositionally reductive. Each painting in this ongoing series is a small, luminous color field composed with layers of translu...

Lush Minimalism Silk Road is chromatically juicy and compositionally reductive. Each painting in this ongoing series is a small, luminous color field composed with layers of translu...

Lush Minimalism Silk Road is chromatically juicy and compositionally reductive. Each painting in this ongoing series is a small, luminous color field composed with layers of translu...

Signed & dated Verso. 1965 Paul Reed in 1970. He favored “staining” untreated canvas. Paul Reed, the last surviving member of the Washington Color School, who explored the complexities of color and form in vibrant bio-morphic and hard-edge abstract paintings, died on Sept. 26 at his home in Phoenix. He was 96. His death was confirmed by his daughter, Jean Reed Roberts. Mr. Reed acquired his public identity as an artist when he was included, along with Gene Davis, Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Thomas Downing and Howard Mehring, in “The Washington Color Painters,” a landmark traveling exhibition that began at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art in 1965. All of the other painters had been shown, the year before, in “Post-Painterly Abstraction,” a 31-artist exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized by the critic Clement Greenberg in an effort to write a new chapter in the historic march of abstract art. Like his fellow Washington artists, Mr. Reed rejected the hot, gestural approach of Abstract Expressionism and explored color and abstract forms in a cooler mode. Working with diluted acrylic paint, in discrete series that methodically explored formal issues, he created luminous fields of color by letting the paint bleed into, or stain, untreated canvas. “I have a saying: Pollock dripped, Frankenthaler poured,” he told The Washington Post in 2011, referring to the artist Helen Frankenthaler. “Morris Louis poured. Howard Mehring sprinkled. I blot.” In his first stained series, “Mandala,” color radiated from a circular central image. The nearly 100 paintings in his “Disk” series, which he called “a matrix for exploiting color,” consisted of a central circle and two triangles positioned at the corners of the canvas. Over the next decade he moved to hard-edge geometric zigzags and stripes in the vertical “Upstart” series, color grids and shaped canvases that allowed for more complex experiments in form and color relations. He also made welded steel sculptures and, in the “Quad” series of the 1980s, collaged photographs. “Reed was, in a sense, the ‘little master’ of that first batch of Washington colorists,” the critic Benjamin Forgey wrote in The Washington Post in 1997. “He was a latecomer — he didn’t turn seriously to painting until he was in his mid-30s — but he never considered becoming anything other than an abstract painter. And when he was ready to show, in his early 40s, he was a very good abstract painter indeed.” Mr. Reed gave himself a more modest assessment in an interview with NPR last year. “I’m sort of low man on the totem pole of that group of six,” he said. Paul Allen...

Lush Minimalism Silk Road is chromatically juicy and compositionally reductive. Each painting in this ongoing series is a small, luminous color field composed with layers of translu...