Artist Dale Roberts with one of his paintings. (Credit: Dale Roberts)
Encaustic painter Dale Roberts is the current featured artist at Art in the Storefront, Ambler, 41 E. Butler Ave, adjacent to Denney Electric Supply.
The storefront visitors’ area is a covered, enclosed area that can be visited anytime day or evening as it’s lit courtesy of Denney’s. The prices of each piece and added details on the encaustic process are displayed within the storefront.
Encaustic painting, an ancient hot wax process, combines molten beeswax and dry-colored pigments. The work, done on a glue-prepared gesso panel, uses paints consisting of beeswax, dammar crystals, and dry pigments. Paint is applied hot and manipulated using various methods. The final image is subjected to a heat treatment of the surface, known as “burning-in.” This process creates a paint film, microcrystal in structure, that never dries out so it cannot darken, yellow, crack or fade.
Finished works are among the most permanent of all ancient painting media. Examples more than 3,500 years old are exhibited in museums throughout the world. Remarkably, they look as though they were freshly painted, without a crack or diminution of vibrancy.
“The encaustic paintings and drawings shown at this exhibit and at my website are evidence of a continual dialogue with the visible world around us,” said Roberts.
Roberts, a self-proclaimed instinctive painter, has been exploring encaustic and other ancient media forms for 40 years. He graduated Cum Laude with a B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from Tyler School of Art. His work has been widely shown locally and at the Art Nou Mil-Lenni Gallery in Barcelona, Spain.
Roberts was an adjunct professor at Arcadia University and enjoys hosting workshops at the International Encaustic Conference and the Federation of Canadian Artists in Calgary, Canada. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and books, and several public and private collectors hold his works.
Visit dalerobertsencaustic.com or contact Roberts via email at robertsfamily11@gmail.com.
The ongoing Ambler Art in the Storefront exhibits are co-curated by Karen Kieser, Immersion Studio, and Mark Elliott, No Bare Walls Framing Studio, for the sole purpose of supporting the art world. Artists do not pay a fee to exhibit their work. For details, contact Elliott at 215-654-9106.
This article appears courtesy of a content share agreement between Wissahickon Now and The Ambler Gazette. To read more stories like this, visit the Ambler Gazette.
