ARTWORKS by MARY PIPPITT

Originally from the East Coast, Mary Pippitt currently divides her time between Northern California and San Miguel de Allende, where the city’s artistic environment provides time and opportunities to explore her creative side. Encaustic painting with its unique waxy scent, its smooth silky surfaces and enticement to touch finished pieces, captured her artistic senses. Encaustic painting’s malleability allows her to embed everyday artifacts into works of art. It’s not usual for her pieces to include a photograph, a piece of fabric, discarded metal pieces, or any number of “treasures” she might stumble upon while on daily walks. Warmer temperatures led her to seek out an alternative medium and she began to explore cold wax and oil.

While many of Mary’s pieces are abstract, she engages in representational work as well. Abstracts involve numerous hours of layering paint, solvents, and mark-making. Some paintings reveal themselves in a matter of hours while others remain hidden, hesitating to emerge and requiring weeks or even months to tease them out. This aspect of painting has helped Mary understand the importance of patience and respecting for the artistic process.