Influential Artists Part 3: Essence of Mulranny
(posted 01/11/2025)
We’ve all heard or even know that art is a journey, not a destination. For me it’s about immersing myself in the process – exploring, experimenting, and expressing. In 2021 I signed up for the Essence of Mulranny Painting with Fire nine-month series. I cannot praise this set of courses enough, and I have only purchased one year of them.
Essence of Mulranny Arts linked here is an art studio and classroom located in (as their site says) “sheep country” of Ireland. (In case you’re wondering, I’m not being paid to write any of this. I currently do not have any endorsements or monetize my web site. All my business income is from art sales.) I did not travel to Ireland, but I purchased the Painting with Fire video courses in April of 2021 and found a few favorite instructors: Elise Wagner, Pamela Caughey, Ezschwan Winding, and Lyn Belisle.
Elise Wagner has a very interesting background in collagraph printmaking and has used encaustic wax surfaces as the basis for prints, which I find very fascinating. I kept her techniques in mind when working on pieces where the texture is a focal point, like my encaustic painting below, “Beyond.”
Ezschwan Winding taught me how to approach a portrait and after watching her course, I ended up making the following piece, “Heavy,” which was accepted into the Lakeland May Show a couple years ago.
Abstract encaustic master Pamela Caughey’s course was my inspiration to make the Waterfall series. They were created all at once by first binding all the canvases together. The photo below shows them right after they were separated.
And Lyn Belisle’s course highlighting faux surfaces made me experiment further with metallic powder pastels in my work. I love when I can make beeswax look like burnished metal, such as the following piece, “Straw Into Gold.”
The handful of courses I have viewed have been so enriching to me that I have yet to finish watching all of them. They never expire, so that has been a huge benefit as well. I better catch up because more courses have been released every year since 2021!
I’ll always be striving to learn more. Looking back, it’s satisfying for me to see how I’ve learned from many sources and forged my own unique path with encaustic medium.