Montserrat and Beyond

Well what a fantastic experience - going to the Montserrat Encaustic Conference in Beverly Massachusetts.

Here is a small shot of the exhibition of everyone who attended the conference. We were each allowed to bring one of our encaustic paintings and hang it on the board called "Best Foot Forward" . Since there were nearly 250 attending this turned out to be quite the gallery. It was on the second floor of the School building where all of the demo's and talks were being held and where all the vendor's were selling their wares. So we got to go by it frequently and see the new additions.

I met up with 2 painters from Omaha Nebraska named Tricia and Betsy and all together we took in the 4 day event which was packed full of lectures and panel discussions as well as great restaurants and the conference demo's and lectures. In addition there were 4 other gallery shows in the area sporting encaustic works - one of them called "Wax Libris" met us first thing on the morning of the first day as we picked up our registration packets in the Montserrat Library since it was a show of waxed book arts - absolutely charming and amazing. I'll be showing you pictures of this next.

And other than the show itself and the good company I kept, I was charmed and overwhelmed by the beautiful surrounding landscapes, the port and nearby Salem where we made an excursion to. More about that later. It was a cool 65-70 degrees too so just right for my northwest coast sensibilities.

And it helped me choose the direction I want to focus on more clearly as encaustic. So you'll be seeing more wax paintings as I go forward.