Rico's Café and Wine Bar Featured Artist Exhibition: Sheary Clough Suiter

Suiter’s paintings are at once narrative, figurative, and abstract. Part whimsy, part mystery ,shape, color, pattern, and mark making are all strong design elements found in her work. She works in an intuitive and direct manner, embracing the unexpected results of melting wax. “I’ve found my true passion in encaustic.  Working with wax is physical and just a little dangerous.  I paint molten wax with a brush, fuse with an open-flame torch, and carve back into the hardened wax with sharp metal instruments.”

Awards recognizing her expertise in encaustic include a Permanent Collection Purchase by the Anchorage Museum of Art, a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Project Award, an Alaska State Council on the Arts Career Opportunity Grant, funded by the NEA, as well as a 3-year commission by Aventa Credit Union, to design and execute original encaustic paintings for the annual Pikes Peak Art Council’s “Spirit of the Arts Award.”

Currently Ombudsperson for the non-profit arts organization International Encaustic Artists, Sheary is founder and past president of Alaska Wax (Alaska Chapter, IEA), subsequently serving the organization on a national level as IEA Chief Officer of Opportunities. Sheary teaches workshops on the art of painting with encaustic at Bemis School of Art and is represented locally at 45 Degree Gallery, Old Colorado City. Online at www.backdoordesigns.com.