About the Artist

Darcy Schultz, Encaustic Artist

Darcy has maintained studio space at Phoenix Office Park, Western Avenue Studios, Portland Art Studios, and a few home studios over the years. She has recently shown work with the North Olympic Art Association, Fort Point Art Association Lending Program, and in Portland (OR), Lowell, West Medford, and Fort Point Open Studios.

She has returned to the Northwest after being back East for 15 years. During the nearly 20 years she spent in Portland, Oregon, she earned an MA in Art Therapy and showed her work in an alumni show at The Art Gym, art therapy association group show at ONDA, HipBone Studios, and participated in Southeast Open Studios. Prior to this, she was a member of Amory Street Studios (Jamaica Plain, MA) and then Artists Studios West (Waltham, MA), showing around Boston. Her work is in several private collections and was also chosen for the University of Wisconsin Green Bay’s permanent collection. Darcy is originally from Wisconsin and earned her BA from this institution.

Darcy’s art work has an enduring focus on nature, motion, and color, with recent emphasis on the emotional memory of body as landscape. Her encaustics are hand-made when ever possible from beeswax, Damar varnish, and ground rock, even cocoa powder. Some of the works include organic collage material such as string, dried plants, and hair. This is in line with her strong belief in stewardship of the earth as practical and spiritual practice. 

The abstract series of work, “Glow,” evolved completely through intuition. It is purely a work of imagination, although it has resonance with landscapes of earth, sea, and sky. Each piece fairly moves off the bounds of the wooden substrate, and framing is not essential to the art so edges are lightly finished. The layers of encaustic add depth in another dimension. These pieces involve depicting the wordless motions of emotion. ” In this series, I wish to evoke a sense of the infinite, of limitlessness, of possibility and hope. “

Other pieces incorporate elements of life drawing and clearer reference to landscape. The latest series, painted on 10″ x 10″ boards individually and in series, reference the moody landscape and emotional tone of the Olympic Peninsula.