May 2011 will be the first anniversary of Okanagan Art Works, an online gallery of art and artists from the Okanagan region in Canada. To celebrate this milestone they will make a colourful collector's printed issue available and artists from around B.C. were invited to submit their paintings to grace the cover.

A Golden Evening, 6x6, encaustic on paper, Thea Haubrich

I did enter two paintings, one of them is A Golden Evening, the other is Companions, of which you can see a detail at the top of the newsletter. 

To win and get one of my images on the cover I'm calling in your help:

Would you please vote for me by following this link?

My paintings are # 21 and 25.

Thanks so much in advance!  

And while we're on the subject of viewing art:  

Jill Tucker has a show of her acrylic paintings at the Red Rooster Winery on the Naramata Bench. 

Wine and art: the perfect combination for a great spring outing when you're in the valley.  

Runs April 1 - 28, daily 11 AM - 5 PM. 

Encaustic and photographs

Last December I had to cancel this workshop, but have now rescheduled it for Friday, April 8, 2011.

Location is the Kenyon House in Okanagan Falls, B.C.

We'll be working with prints on different papers & tissue, gluing, colouring, embedding, dipping, texturing; you name it!

There are 3 spots left...email me to sign up.

(You do need to have some experience in working with wax to participate.)

Frithjof Schulte

Frithjof resides in Oberursel, near Frankfurt, Germany. He and I go way back, to the times of Michael Bossom's interactive gallery.  

Always gracious in his comments, he was a frequent participant in the forum and uploaded many of his fascinating paintings. Frithjof has a great sense of humour in his writings AND in his art!

You can view his latest work here.

Frithjof's artist statement: (with big thanks to Carol for her help with the editing!):

In his work, Frithjof Schulte considers the relationship between nature and people in the context of our high-tech world;  a world in which we human beings seem to be increasingly separated from the traditional social ties which help us to identify ourselves.  Schulte's approach to this theme is unconventional, and in the exhibits he renders these notions without moralizing.  He uses subtlety and complexity to express his point of view.

Schulte uses what he describes as a 'confrontation of digital photography with age-old techniques of encaustic painting":  his term for this medium is 'Photo-caustic".  The digital images are fascinating to the viewer, and they are also very moving.  The image content---landscape, for example---stands strangely detached, alienated and abstract.  At the same time, the work is often very realistically rendered.

Frithjof Schulte approaches his encaustic painting playfully and uniquely.  Tremendous power emanates from the vivid colours in his work.  His high-energy images convey, simultaneously, a sense of joy and optimism, brushed with a touch of sadness and melancholy. 

Carnival with a Cold, Frithjof Schulte

April Special

This month's Special:

4 heat-resistant sponges   

+ 5 scrapy tools  

for a special price of $25.95 instead of $30.45