Meet Pam Nichols: Encaustic Painter.

Pam Nichols is Washington County Open Studios Sponsorship chair.  For the past two years, Pam has coordinated and collected the funds to make our tour and full-color catalog a reality.  In addition to making art, Pam has helped our group make the money needed to keep our tour alive.

For Pam, art and creativity started at an early age because she was born into a creative family.

“I grew up in a family that was very artistic. My mom was a painter, jewelry maker and her passion was stained glass,” says Pam. “She had a studio/store when I was 12 until I was in my 30's.  My older brother painted, was a builder of incredible forts as a kid and dabbled in stained glass, and then he found his passion in glass blowing. He was a collector of marbles in his youth and decided to make his own, taught himself and made his own equipment. He is a true inspiration to me. He does what he loves and by his example, gave me the courage to be a full time artist, to reach out and go for what I was passionate about, encaustic painting. I tried all different mediums, but nothing really fit me, until I painted with hot liquid encaustic paint (beeswax, resin and pigment).”

Pam loves her work as an artist and her medium for many different reasons. “I love being in the process of making something, figuring out how it will work and look. Creating something out of nothing. My medium allows me to be me and allows me to touch people’s lives through the art I make. Encaustic painting can go in so many directions, you can paint realism or abstract, you can use it sculpturally, create collages and more. I love the variety it has.”

Her favorite part of the process, according to Pam, “is being in the zone and just letting the creative juices flow.”

Encaustic uses a wide range of art materials from the expected to the exotic.  “I use a variety of materials,” explains Pam, “such as the normal things as papers, inks, oil pastels all the way to dried coffee grounds, glass frit, shaved metal, the spice cloves, my dried passion tea leaves, metal objects and my most favorite thing ferric oxide (rust)!! I transfer rust from metal objects to paper which I incorporate into my painting or I will rust right to my encaustic paint.”

When people come to Pam’s studio, they’ll see a variety of techniques.

“Folks will get to experience my passion for what I do, by watching me paint, demonstrating different techniques,” says Pam. “ Most people are fascinated watching me use a torch to move around the encaustic paint (beeswax, resin & pigment), how it can swirl and blend together creating some incredible designs/patterns.”

To see more of Pam’s work, visit her website at www.pamlnichols.com