Joanne Mattera

Silk Road 386 - Contemporary Pale Violet Teal Blue Encaustic Wax Painting

An abstract 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, dat...

In this contemporary painting, dark red encaustic (pigmented beeswax) is accented with subtle lilac, gray and lavender details and a light purple edge. Signed, dated and titled on ve...

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...

Contemporary American ceramic artist Richard Hirsch's encaustic Painting of Nothing #75 is made of ceramic raw materials, dry pigment and wax. This piece is part of his ongoing Painting of Nothing Series. Hirsch applies the waxy mix with a brush onto redwood plywood backed structures with two-inch wood strips all around and used various torches to layer, flux, bubble and blend. "Waxy and very tactile, they are probably the work Mark Rothko would have done had he spent most of his life in clay. Hirsch’s paintings have the nuance, subtle texture, and color shifts that become evident in blown-up photographs of his ceramic objects as well as a similar presence." Signed and dated en verso by the artist. This painting ship directly from the artist’s studio in Rochester, NY. (Literature: "With Fire: Richard Hirsch, A Life Between Chance and Design", Scott Meyer (Author), RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press 2012 - "The Paintings" pgs. 102 - 105) Richard Hirsch brief bio: In the field of contemporary ceramic, Rick Hirsch has earned an international reputation. He has achieved this recognition by engaging in numerous diversified professional activities. Through efforts in university teaching, exhibits, writing, lecturing and researching he has risen to worldwide prominence. In 1975, Hirsch co-authored a book entitled Raku, published by Watson-Guptill. This was the first comprehensive text to address the new innovations developing in the west that were transforming traditional Japanese Raku. Also, in the same year, Hirsch became a founding faculty member of The Program in Artistry at Boston University. Currently, Hirsch is a Professor Emeritus at The School for American Crafts which is a part of Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. His university teaching career now spans well over four decades. Repeatedly, Hirsch has participated in several milestone exhibitions and publications. Significant shows include; The Evolution of American Art in Craft Media Since 1945; Echoes: Historical References in Contemporary Ceramics; American Ceramics Now; Raku: Origins, Impact and Contemporary Expression; and Convergences: The Presence of the Past in Contemporary American Ceramics...