Color creations

Kingston company tabs artists to make a substance of art

By Alice Hunt
Poughkeepsie Journal

If You Go What: "Encaustic Works 2005," an exhibition of art using encaustic paints. When: Through Dec. 11. Where: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York at New Paltz, 75 S. Manheim Blvd., New Paltz. Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, 1-5 p.m. Admission: Free. Information: Visit www.newpaltz.edu/museum or call 845-257-3844

Karl Rabe photos/Poughkeepsie Journal Marko Shuhan mixes pigments with oils at R&F paints.

A selection of waxes, damar resin and pigments.

The leg of a work bench bears witness to years of paintmaking.

Completed sticks of cadmium deep yellow paint wait to be wrapped.

R&F Paints founder and owner Richard Frumess talks with workshop director Cynthia Winika.

To walk into R&F Paints is to walk into an art store, factory, gallery and school rolled into one.

This small company is dedicated to the creation of encaustic paints and the promotion of their use through a multi-disciplinary approach. Founder and co-owner Richard Frumess and his partner Jim Haskin have been creating these wax paints in the Hudson Valley for 15 years.

"We've had to build our market," Haskin said.

The company has done so by educating artists about the medium through workshops, exhibits of encaustic work and an extensive word-of-mouth campaign, evidenced by the hundreds of photos of works from R&F customers around the globe on display in the factory.

Encaustic paints are made of beeswax, resin and pigment. The paint comes in block form. Artists melt the paint on a heated palette, then brush the melted color onto canvas, wood, paper and other surfaces.

Dates to ancient Greece

The encaustic technique was used by ancient Greeks to decorate war ships and statues, but disappeared when the great empires of the ancient world fell. It experienced a small comeback in the 19th century, but its real resurgence came in the middle of the 20th century.

"It's about creating a community," Frumess said of his business and his art.

Frumess said the company's sales volume is less than $1 million annually. It creates fewer than 100 pieces of encaustic paint and oil sticks daily. But, he said, profit comes second to quality.

Frumess insists that all of his employees are artists.

"It's like hiring a chef who doesn't care about food," Frumess said of having someone other than an artist make the paint.

The employees work four days and then have three days to work on their own artistic endeavors.

Having artists on staff also helps create a "very strong connection" with his customers, Frumess explained, since the artists know how to answer customer questions about how to use encaustics.

"It's artist to artist," he said. It is that kind of service, Frumess said, that helps build the encaustic community.

This network has continued to grow annually, and this year, includes the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

The museum has curated "Encaustic Works 2005," an exhibition showcasing a "very contemporary take on a really ancient medium," according to Beth E. Wilson, interim curator at Dorsky and co-curator of the exhibit. "There's a lot of very experimental stuff in the show."

"Encaustics has all these kinds of wonderful properties," Wilson said. She explained how encaustic paint can have a matte texture and look like skin when layered, but can also be buffed to a high, glossy shine.

Pieces in the show use a variety of materials and techniques mixing encaustics with wood and Plexiglas, or simply using the paint itself in a kind of sculpture.

"It's a very seductive medium," she said.

R&F has held its own biennial shows for the past eight years.

Curator's suggestion

Frumess began using encaustic paints at the suggestion of a curator. He began making the product in 1987, when the store from which he bought the paints closed.

"Nobody really knew how to use encaustics," Frumess said of artists at the time.

Haskin joined R&F in 1990, when he was studying art at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

"It was Richard alone doing everything," Haskin recalled of the company's early days. Haskin, who was a former IBM employee, used his engineering skills to help Frumess modernize and computerize the paintmaking process.

"It would have never been a real business," Frumess said. The computerization "allowed us to expand."

That expansion is continuing, as R&F Paints will be moving to a new, 14,000-square-foot location three blocks from its current home.

In the new location, Frumess said, he hopes to hold more workshops and educational opportunities for those interested in encaustic painting, continuing the factory's outreach.

"We are trying to bring encaustic into the mainstream," Frumess said.

How encaustic paint is made

Encaustic paints are made with a combination of beeswax, damar resin and pigments.

1. Resin is melted with wax.

2. In a vented room, a worker combines raw pigments to create one of the 89 colors in which R&F products come. Many pigments are toxic, so workers must wear protective clothing.

3. The pigment is then added to the beeswax mixture.

4. Workers pour the mixture into a machine that mills the paint. The machine's three heated rollers turn at different speeds, crushing and smearing the pigment into the wax and resin mixture.

5. The machine's rollers grind, how close changes depending on which color is milled.

6. Once the milling process is complete, paintmakers have a small, concentrated batch of pigmented medium.

7. To this batch, more wax and resin are added to make the full batch.

8. During this stage, workers check for consistency of color against earlier batches of the same hue. Any adjustments of color are done here.

9. Once the color is approved, the paint is poured into plastic, rectangular molds of varying sizes.

10. The encaustic blocks are hand-wrapped and packaged to sell.

The process to create oil sticks is slightly different, using different ingredients.

Oil sticks consist of linseed oil, a variety of waxes and pigment.

Pigment is milled only into the oil; the waxes are added after the milling process.

The sticks are poured into cylindrical, metal split molds of varying sizes, rather than rectangular molds.

Closer look

R&F Handmade Paints

The R&F factory, gallery and store are at 506 Broadway, Kingston.

Phone: 845-331-3112 or 1-800-206-8088

Web site: www.rfpaints.com.

Hours: Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.