Mixed Media Encaustic
Fall Workshop | Registration opens Wednesday, August 6, 2025 12:00 AM EDT
This workshop involves the exploration of encaustic, one of the most exciting and versatile mediums available to the contemporary artist. Open to artists from beginning to advanced levels of development, no prior experience in encaustic painting is necessary.
This workshop is taught from a hands-on approach, as participants are encouraged to develop a personal vocabulary by applying these new techniques to their current ideas and methodologies. This workshop introduces participants to the basics of encaustic painting as well as a variety of intermediate-advanced techniques.
The information and techniques covered in this workshop include equipment and safety issues, tools, grounds and substrates, application and painting techniques, fusing, color mixing, incising, sgraffito, creating texture, surface manipulation, photo transfer and collage. Historical and contemporary issues and practices involving encaustic are further explored through a preliminary slide lecture.
- Please bring $20 materials fee payable to instructor
- Mixed Media Sketchbook
• Favorite sketching materials
• 2-4 wooden painting panels or Encausticbord (your preference of 8x8 or 10x10, but no larger or smaller, please.) If purchasing wooden panels, it’s your preference if you want to add encaustic gesso, but nothing coated in acrylic or acrylic gesso!!
• 2 to 3 hake or hog's bristle natural hair brushes in 1-2 inch sizes (no larger than 2 inches). 1 brush will be designated your medium brush (no larger than 1.5 inch), so it must be free of color if you are bringing used encaustic brushes)
Lorraine Glessner
Memory, experience, all of life is made up of layers. Everything we do is cumulative to what we have done before and everything we perceive is in the context of what we know.
I grew up in the seventies, when pattern and tactility existed everywhere from shag carpeting, funky needlepoint and macramé to my mother’s paisley dresses. When I was young, one of my first house chores was to rake the shag carpeting and I loved making patterns in it as I did this. I also loved to run my hands along the flocked wallpaper as I walked down the hallway to my bedroom. From the very start of my creative life, pattern, tactility, mark making, process and craft have played a part and continue in my work today.