Featured Artist Pamela Beer

Artist Pamela Beer presents a collection of boldly vibrant abstracts painted in oil and cold wax. Learn more about the artist by visiting her website.

 

 

I have always been creative and lived in a world of very precise, mechanical, technological reality—out of step with the rest of my environment.

 

 

In 2013, I left that world where I felt I had to slog through everything just to feel normal.

 

 

Now I paint and I am content to make art that feels good and that makes others feel something. Though I cannot control how my audience responds, I am always surprised by what resonates with others.

 

 

Making art is a pathway for feeling things that I don’t believe the world always allows us to feel. I often experience joy and peace. And there are times when I feel dark and stormy too. These feelings may be evident all at once or individually, depending upon the length of time it takes to bring a work to completion. Each piece can take many weeks to complete. And since my emotions change depending upon the events of life, those differences definitely end up in the work.

 

 

For me, my focus is mainly on our humanity—the simple things in life, our hopes, our dreams and the love we want to share with others. Human psychology and sociology fascinate me. Spirituality confounds me but it also pulls at me.

 

 

Though I work with many mediums, I have recently discovered oil and cold wax medium and am exploring different ways of using it. I love how it can be transparent or opaque, and textural or smooth. It is like working with sculpting materials on wood panel. It reveals so much depth as it is applied in a multitude of layers that allow optical color shifts to occur.

 

 

Each work begins with several layers of oil paint and cold wax applied with squeegees. For other works, I begin the design right away or even begin a design over acrylic.

 

 

I have no rules, just what feels right at the moment.

 

 

Subsequent colors are applied with soft brayer rollers for a sheer layered effect and sometimes bold and thick for a stronger look.

 

 

Lately, I’ve even begun creating more liquid textures of the oil and cold wax mixture to enable brushwork or drips as a third way to apply the paint forms. The design plays out in a “call and response” journey and is complete when I have nothing more to say.

 

Artist Pamela Beer invites you to follow her on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

 

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