Gruening Cabin Artist-in-Residence

Rainy Summer Day     Acrylic on canvas    9 x 12 inches

Maureen Engle is an Atlanta, Georgia artist 

who paints with a palette knife like she is wielding a brush! 

She hosted a trio of Juneau Plein Rein artists for lunch at the Gruening Cabin today. 

Maureen is one of the artists chosen for the Artist-in-Residence summer 2017 program.

(I was going to put a link to the current program description 

and the artists but there doesn't seem to be a current page for it. 

So HERE is the link to the description, 

application process and the 2016 artists.) 

 Maureen shared some palette knife, watercolor and 

acrylic painting tips, fed us soup, 

cole slaw, chili and was a delightful, talented host.

Since she lives in Atlanta, she was thoroughly enjoying the cool SE Alaska weather!

What I learned from her mini-workshop was that:

• Mixing paint directly on your canvas is perfectly fine, rather than mixing colors on your palette first
• A palette knife can be very expressive
• Be aware of the four corners of your painting
• Acrylic can be stored for a couple of hours without drying out by using a paper palette, laying another clean piece of paper palette on top of your piles of paint and folding the palette up, Rorschach-like
• Painting with a palette knife on stretched canvas seems to work better for some artists because of the springiness of the canvas
• Acrylic paintings can LOOK very much like oil paintings

Ernest Gruening Cabin

Maureen's paintings: a Sockeye and a King


I tried out the acrylic palette knife technique
with the painting at the top of this post and this one below:

Stop the Rain!       Acrylic on Canvas  8 x 8 inches

Me, Jay, Cristine and Maureen

We were so grateful for Maureen's kind critiques

 in this valuable and fun mini-workshop!

Thank you for peeking in to my art blog, I appreciate it!