Welcome to Fall Favorites – Week Six
David Witbeck, James Rivington Pyne
and Guest Artist Amailia Tagaris
We are featuring two or three artists in a weekly campaign. Any purchases of the weekly featured pieces are eligible for free shipping within the contiguous US or free local delivery when purchased by the end of the week. Join our email list to learn about the artists as they are announced! It’s on the bottom right of our home page. FMI call 207-967-2803 or info@maine-art.com.
Remember, from October 1 to November 20, we are hanging all the Fall Favorites as a show in the Show Gallery at 5 Chase Hill Road in Kennebunk.
David Witbeck
My places and things have analogs in reality, but specifically, they exist only in my mind and on the canvas. They are irreverent fantasies of love of boats and the seacoast, respect and admiration for people who wrest a living from saltwater, and maybe just a little bit of envy or disappointment of never having been one of them. They come from years of observation, a good amount of imagination, and just a smidge of experience.
James Rivington Pyne
In my work, I use wood, steel, found wood, and latex. I also do bronzes. I try to capture, in birds, for instance, either the subject’s extreme stillness (a heron fishing) or its opposite. The best way to express a bird’s edginess on a limb or briskness in flight is by rough, almost blurred outlines, similar to a sketch, rather than smooth finishes. My work is stylized, but the subject is never unrecognizable. A source of inspiration for me is the 18th-century animal miscellanies depicting creatures drawn by artists whose sole knowledge of their subjects came not from actual sighting but from hearsay, folklore, and, in some cases, a desire to amuse or terrify.
Guest Artist Amalia Tagaris
Click here to go to the website for details and individual images
The versatility of this ancient medium allows it to adopt various materials within its own skin to reveal an entirely new meaning. It also allows me to infuse bold, luscious colors and textures onto what would otherwise be a flat surface. The tactile property of the wax demands physical interaction during the process of scraping, incising, and smoothening its surface, layer after layer. There is a push and pull between spontaneous and intentional compositions as the molten wax becomes malleable when a heat source is reintroduced to bind its newly applied strokes to the existing ones. Quite often, something extraordinarily beautiful arises from these unplanned happenings, which makes working with encaustic very appealing in expressing my visual narrative.
