Cindy Turns a Page
For those who have been following our resident artistic genius's
involvement with the Youth Consortium projects and have been asking,
“What's Cindy Ricksgers been doing with her art,” we
have an answer: it's been developing just fine. The winter before
this one she had spent most of her time creating a stunning series
of collagraphs, the abstract 'pyramids' that impart such a surprising
sense of tranquility–perhaps because their jumping-off point
was the steeply gabled room in which she had felt so secure as
a young girl. This winter, with far less time on her hands, she
concentrated on three areas: a few new collagraphs (in which the
interior of the 'safe room' has begun to develop); some realistic
drawing; and experiments in a new medium: encaustic.
Encaustic is an ancient medium that had its origin among Greek
painters in Egypt at the beginning of the Christian era, but has
picked up and expanding number of practitioners in the past fifty
years–thanks in part to its use by Diego Rivera and Jasper
Johns. It involves the mixing of wax (primary beeswax) with oil
paint (typically in a 3:1 ratio), and the application of a heat
gun to the finished work to diffuse the paint in three dimensions
and give the work a shimmering aura. This past winter Cindy has
experimented with applying encaustic to a series of collages done
on wood, abstract designs involving mosaics imposed over a colored
background, with a variety of elements added to impart energy,
many taken from her various painted hand-made papers. The end
result seems to fix and present a mystery, the way one can't get
over it when an injured songbird lies fluttering in one's hand:
here it is, these works say, flickering in and out of existence,
removed from its timeless domain.
Cindy is nothing if not a consummate artist. As such, with each
new turn in her road, she insists on knowing the context. So she
thoroughly researches her proposed departure, learning the exact
place to which her compatriots have pushed the envelope so she
can step in without a beat being missed. But like any good artist,
she is experimental, even playful, always looking for something
new. “I want to break rules like crazy,” she said. “So
I have to know what all the rules are, first.” She is proceeding
through the dark by the light of her own very bright internal
candle, communicating in a language of gesture and feeling and
mood. She may not know what she will find, but she knows exactly
where she is.
Cindy’s work is available at the newly-expanded Livingstone
Studio on Beaver Island, and Main Frame Gallery
in Mt. Pleasant.
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