By Katherine Culclasure

Pamela Winegard, “Urban People Series” 2012-13, 20″x16″ (each), encaustic and mixed media on birch panels.

I became familiar with local artist Pamela Winegard, during my internship at the McColl Center for Visual Art. She herself was fresh to the contemporary art center, but as an honorable Summer 2012 Affiliate Artist-In-Residence.

Winegard now lives in Matthews, N.C. but spends her studio time in Charlotte’s South End. She is now one of the areas most established mixed media artists, having received numerous awards, grants and nods in publications. These include Cabarrus Arts Council’s 2003 award for the city’s mural project, “Windows of Cabarrus County.” In 2010, Winegard was awarded again by Mecklenburg County’s Arts & Science Council Penland School of Crafts Scholarship.

Currently Showing

Winegard’s innovative artwork is currently featured in “Artifice: Betsy Birkner + Pamela Winegard” at Central Piedmont Community College’s (CPCC) Pease Gallery. It is featured with ceramicist Betsy Birkner’s series of armored breastplates. The collections complement and support each other through exploration of society’s outdated principals, conveying themes of confinement and repression.

The three encaustic pieces of Winegard’s “Urban People Series” recently caught my attention while at Pease Gallery. The collection came to life through her use of mixed media, encaustic, and graphite-on-birch panels. The series consists of recognizable landmarks of Charlotte’s cityscape, like the Hearst Tower and McColl Center for Visual Art. The panels are layered with wax and transferred images in a palette of warm shades of sunset.

In the triptych “Artifice,” she suggests bucolic notions through gauche paintings of purposefully skewed barns and sylvan terrain, against the backdrop of a hand-drawn grid. “The grid represents a superimposing structure”, Winegard explains. Looking closer, the viewer understands that what should reflect a simple farm life has been replaced by inanimate pieces of menacing machinery. The trees surrounding the barn have been dwarfed in their confinement of the man-made grid lines, hinting at the classic tug-of-war between the natural world and human intrusion.

Pamela Winegard, “Artifice (Triptych)” 2013-14, 34″x27″ (each/framed), gouache and graphite on 300-lb. paper.

The water towers depicted in “Sweet Water” are perfectly deserving of the title, as they appear to be a dream of candy-colored confection. Yet, they suffocate under the oppression of crushing branches. Here again, undertones of the natural world being superimposed by the man-made is quite clear.

What’s Old is New Again

Winegard’s medium of choice, encaustic painting, can easily be considered one of the oldest art forms. Encaustic painting consists of a beeswax-resin mixture used to create a thick yet malleable medium.

Encaustic painting means strategically working in layers, which is something Winegard accomplishes quite easily. When viewing her work, one can effortlessly envision her thought process. The multitude of layers, both in the images used and subtext behind them, conjures both feelings of uncertainty and awe.

“Artifice: Betsy Birkner + Pamela Winegard” is on display until March 6th at CPCC’s Pease Gallery.