Alaina Enslen

Carbon Gold: Abstract Encaustic Painting in Indigo, Forest Green & Copper

2024

Abstract geometric encaustic painting in patterned ochre on white "Centuries Spliced Open" made by Hudson Valley artist, Alaina Enslen, in 2022 Encaustic & monotype mounted on panel 30 x 41 x 2 inches, sides reveal raw wood sides Excellent condition, ready to hang Lightweight Signed, verso This abstract minimalist painting is made with pattered ochre monotypes on an encaustic white background. The paper, which is adhered to a light wood Birch panel and layered with a subtle layer of encaustic, is arranged in a geometric motif that accentuates the play of negative space. The layered paper and encaustic create a textured, impasto surface. About the artist: Alaina Enslen expresses her artistic vision through repurposed fabrics infused with beeswax. The Cornwall-On-Hudson based artist collects pieces of textile that evoke memory, tradition, or experience like cherished worn heirlooms, discarded clothes, and religious garments, which are then assembled on panel in an abstract patchwork. Favoring fabrics with a neutral or subtle cool palette, she flattens and frays the material to explore color, form, and lines, reimaging used cloth...

Abstract encaustic painting with dyed teal, indigo, white and beige fabrics "White Breezes & Blue Skies" made by Hudson Valley artist, Alaina Enslen, in 2022 Encaustic & dyed fabrics mounted on panel 17 x 26 x 2 inches unframed, sides reveal raw panel and wrapped fabric Excellent condition, ready to hang Lightweight Signed, verso This abstract minimalist painting is made with repurposed pieces of found fabrics in complementary tones of teal, indigo, and beige on an encaustic white background. The fabrics, which are adhered to a light wood Birch panel and layered with a subtle layer of encaustic, are arranged in a whimsical motif that accentuates the spontaneous dyed patterns. The layers of fabric and encaustic create a textured, impasto surface. About the artist: Alaina Enslen expresses her artistic vision through repurposed fabrics infused with beeswax. The Cornwall-On-Hudson based artist collects pieces of textile that evoke memory, tradition, or experience like cherished worn heirlooms, discarded clothes, and religious garments, which are then assembled on panel in an abstract patchwork. Favoring fabrics with a neutral or subtle cool palette, she flattens and frays the material to explore color, form, and lines, reimaging used cloth...

Abstract encaustic painting with dyed blue fabrics with accents of copper and green on a neutral, off-white cloth background "Worn Blue Around the Edges" made by Hudson Valley artist...

Abstract encaustic painting with a green, earth toned palette. Made with natural plant material (Northern Sea Oats) "Chasmanthium Insignias I" made by Allyson Levy in 2021 encaustic and plant material on wood panel, 24 x 24 x 1 inches Lightweight, hangs with one d-ring, Signed, verso This modern abstract encaustic painting by Allyson Levy is made with Northern Sea Oats and green encaustic, sealed with a layer of neutral wax on a wood panel. The artist begins by finding the organic material in her 4-acre garden in upstate New York which she then arranges and embeds with encaustic on a wooden panel. The brown, earth toned sea oats are laid in a linear pattern on a wood panel with a surface of green encaustic and then sealed with clear wax. The encaustic wraps around to the sides of the panel, revealing some bumps and downward drips, accumulated during the natural drying process. The piece is lightweight and hangs on one d-ring. About the artist and her work: After moving to the rural town of Stone Ridge, NY seventeen years ago and starting a 4-acre botanical garden with her husband, mixed media artist, Allyson Levy, has found endless inspiration in the plant kingdom that surrounds her. The garden itself, named “Hortus Conclusus”, consisting of thousands of rare plants and edibles, remains at the epicenter of Levy’s art making. A fascination with earth’s bounty is expressed with her works in encaustic. Assorted organic material such as leaves, seeds, branches, insect wings...

Longing for Now is an evocative artwork that immediately captivates with its unique presentation on a custom wooden arc, eliminating the need for traditional framing and making it re...

In Last Noon Beheld Them color, line, shape, and texture collide with handwritten romantic fragments of prose on Kozuke ivory paper. This one-of-a-kind, unmounted encaustic monotype ...

Encaustic painting is an ancient art form and was practiced by artists as far back as the 5th century B.C. The word encaustic comes from Greek and means “to burn in”, which refers to the process of fusing the paint. The technique uses heated wax to which coloured pigments are added. The molten wax is applied to a firm surface–usually prepared wood, paper, or canvas. Encaustic has a long history, but it is as versatile as any 20th-century medium. Brushes are used to apply and shape the wax before it cools, then it can be polished to a high gloss, it can be modelled, sculpted, textured, and combined with collage materials. The wax cools immediately, so that there is no drying time, yet it can always be reworked. Encaustic paintings do not have to be varnished or protected by glass. "A Thin Wash of Morning Rain...

Michael David (b. 1954) Billie's Tree Signed, Titled, and Dated 1982 Verso. Provenance: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (bears label en verso) where it had been exhibited for nearly two decades. It was also Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA NYC) just after he won the National Guggenheim Award. The Piece Measures approximately 70" x 71" x 8" Deep. Michael David Singer; born 1954, is an American painter. Born in Reno, Nevada, David's family relocated to Brooklyn, New York, where he was raised. He attended SUNY Fredonia for one year and in 1976 received a B.F.A. from Parson's School of Design. Michael David is classified as an abstract painter, best known for his use of the encaustic technique, a was pigmentation technique which incorporates pigment with heated beeswax. He is also known for his works in mixed-media figure painting, photography and environmental sculpture. He often incorporates religious iconography and symbolism, art historical themes such as the nude, and contemporary politics into his paintings resulting in a critical dialogue between the layered abstraction of the surface and the integrated representational imagery. His work is included in the permanent public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. In 1976 David, erotic photographer Roy Stuart and Fredonia friend Richie Stotts formed a band called The Numbers, with David on bass. The group was a fixture in New York's early punk rock music scene, playing in clubs alongside punk pioneers Television, Blondie and the Ramones. David also played bass with punk innovators Jerry Nolan of The New York Dolls, Cheetah Chrome of The Dead Boys, Marky Ramone, Peter Gordon, David Van Tieghem and the free-improvisation noise music group Borbetomagus. In 1977, The Numbers were approached by impresario Rod Swenson, who was seeking musicians to form a backing band for singer Wendy O. Williams, whose radical persona he sought to exploit as punk music and performance art. The Numbers became The Plasmatics but the attention David began to gain as an important voice in the art world caused him to leave the band to pursue his burgeoning painting career. David's first one-man show was in 1981 at the historic Sidney Janis Gallery. That year he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, at the time the youngest artist ever to do so, and in 1982 was awarded an American Academy of Arts and Letters prize. He went on to exhibit at galleries worldwide and was represented by Knoedler & Co. for the next 25 years. David is best known for using the encaustic technique of painting, which uses pigment combined with heated beeswax. David built his early career on abstraction and religious iconography, which formed the bulk of his output until 1999. Since then he has also experimented with representational painting and traditional photography. In 2000, he developed the "Chortens" and "Populations" series, about which prominent art historian and critic Donald Kuspit writes: "They are enigmatic works, all the more so because of the way their innumerable details form singularly monumental, intimidating wholes. Dense yet delicate, awesome yet intimate, they convey the fragility as well as grandeur of sheer being. Layer upon layer of paint piles up like layer upon layer of coral, but the textural result is more epic, not to say startling, than any coral island, and virtually any other existing abstract expressionist painting (upon which they are stylistically founded)." In 2001, David developed bi-lateral neuropathy due to being poisoned by gases released by overheated beeswax used in the encaustic process. The disease left him with partial paralysis of his legs, slowing the production of his painting for a number of years. That year, David began painting one of his best-known series, the "fallen Toreadors", inspired by 19th century French Realist painter Édouard Manet's "The Dead Toreador" of 1864. In 1993, David experimented at the "20x24" Polaroid studio in Manhattan, which resulted in a series of portraits of playwright Edward Albee and of friend Jackie Gross, which would become the ongoing "Jackie" series of mixed-media works. When neuropathy rendered him unable to paint during 2003, he returned to the 20x24 camera and shot large-format Polaroids inspired by Caravaggio; nude men and women dressed as Toreadors, and religious imagery. In 2002, David began to develop The Greenhouse Project, an evolving "architectural construct" based on historical American Antebellum greenhouses built using the actual glass negatives sold to starving farmers in the post-American Civil War South. David has indicated that each greenhouse will, through the display of photography and use of social networking, create a forum and exhibit for ideas and artifacts related to civil and human rights; the specifications of each greenhouse particular to the community in which each is built. David's work was reviewed in Artforum and Art in America, and is considered one of the last links to the New York School of painting. David may be the most innovative master of immediate surface since the abstract expressionists. He has acknowledged his debt to Abstract Expressionism, but he has transformed it. Where the abstract expressionist paintings of the forties and fifties seem like modern cave paintings, as their crude, unfocused, often meandering, turbulent painterliness suggests, and as such to reinstate prehistory, David seems to turn the cave into a temple, as his more considered, concentrated, indeed, dense, contemplative painterliness indicates, so that his paintings have the aura of post history. SELECT GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2023 Radiate, Garvey Simon, New York, New York 2021 Selections from NYFA - Courtesy of the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation, New York, New York 2020 Bill Lowe Gallery Presents: Masterworks from the Gallery 2016 The Golem, The Jewish Museum of Berlin, Berlin, Germany In a Post-World: Post-Punk Art Now, The Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn, New York 2014 Gallery Artists, Bentley Gallery, Pheonix, Arizona 2011 Post Mammalian Tension: Michael David & Scott Browning, Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia 1999 Waxing Poetic: Encaustic Art in America, Montclair Art Museum, (Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg etc) Forty Years of American Drawings, Raab Galerie, Berlin, Germany Germany Summertime, Knoedler & Company, New York, New York 1997 Michael David and James Hyde...