Cindy Rogers

Mixed Media -

Encaustic & Acrylic Paintings

Encaustic painting is one of the oldest painting mediums recorded. It’s a technique of painting with a mixture of beeswax, darmar resin and pigments. I make my own encaustic medium and mix oil pigments into it to create individual colors. I apply the wax/color with rubber or metal spreaders and add and subtract during my many layers of medium application. My paintings have as many as 7 layers, some of them having found fabric or paper materials incased. One of them sometimes being a layer of kozo rice paper with drawings of symbols, words or objects marked in permanent ink. In some cases I use sheet rock tape to give a grid pattern. I have various found textures that I like add or scrape into my paintings. Once my wax has set, I rub oil stick pigments into the scraped lines, adding another dimension to the painting. My Encaustic paintings are done either in a 6 panel format held together with threaded rod, copper pipe, washers, nuts and bolts or single panel format either on a wood panel or heavy watercolor paper; painted at Treedogpress Studio in Woody Creek, Colorado.

I was doing an artist residency at Brush Creek Ranch in Saratoga, Wyoming, where I did a series with the subject matter of the landscapes and town sites of Wyoming and Colorado. On the open prairie in the beautiful landscape of Wyoming, I got the inspiration to paint the spring colors of the landscapes and structures I was surrounded by. They are contemporary but evoke the feel of spring. Waking up after a long snowy winter, the dogwoods were beginning turn a pinkish red and the sage brush starting to glow that bright spring green. While the grass, still lingering that sandy color from winter; waiting for the new grass to come alive.

My acrylic paintings are mixed-media. I like to paint on heavy watercolor paper with layers of acrylic paint and collage. Currently I'm working on a series involving the human figure and her surroundings.