Amy Ruppel

Amy Ruppel is a prolific, self-taught fine artist, photographer, graphic artist, and web designer who has shown her work extensively in Seattle and Portland, including the 2004 Oregon Bienniel. One might be jealous of her many talents if it weren't for the fact that she is one of the nicest persons you'll ever meet.

These works represent snapped moments in time, captured and taken from one simple slice of a digital photograph, to create a field of pure and lucid color. Simple imagery of birds and nests are a recurring, oddly poignant theme in this series. The medium is beeswax layered under and over digital prints on paper derived from her photography, then cut into rounded shapes and completed with drawings etched into the wax. Since the surface is smoothed with the flame of a propane torch, the artist describes her process as "painting with scissors and fire instead of a brush." The artist is constantly exploring new ways to bring the digital realm into the hands-on world and is constantly reworking encaustic methods into fresh contemporary forms. Amy states, "To me, feeling the completion of a piece is like reaching that ethereal finish line, and you feel the way that you do when you see the ocean from the shore, or when you exit a matinee and squint into the sudden light, knowing all along it was there." Which is very much how one feels when experiencing Amy Ruppel’s paintings.












From VELOCITY