Randi Harper:

As a designer, maker, teacher, Randi Harper’s career has spanned more than 30 years. Working in diverse venues, including architecture, marketing design, special education, and as a studio artist; her work is connected and defined by these common threads:  Consistently, it is innovative and cross-disciplinary. It is conceptually and aesthetically engaging. And technically, it pushes boundaries - while respecting tradition and the integrity of process.
Her work has been honored, collected and published nationally and internationally.

Over the course of nearly 20 years as owner of an advertising/design firm, Harper was always a dedicated supporter and advocate for the arts. After “retiring” to rural Snohomish, WA she worked for local school districts, employing art in the curriculum for children with special needs, as well as creating their glass and metals programs. Most recently, she founded The Ranch. Center for Arts & Craft. A teaching studio which hosts significant artists and artisans from the US and abroad. The Ranch.

Randi Harper would not label herself an encaustic artist. Her real contribution to the medium is a unique set of “tools” and materials which she applies from a very different perspective. In a process that invites artists to explore iconically, dimensionally, the symbolism that drives their work.

Karon Leigh

Expressionist painter and printmaker, Karon Leigh is clearly and powerfully influenced by place, light and time. The landscapes of her surroundings are evidenced as transitory thoughts, feelings or memories that speak, through her layered and textural encaustics, of the lush, wet and sensual Pacific Northwest – or the hauntingly arid deserts of the Southwest. Drenched in the colors and almost ethereal qualities of light and depth that are so unique to the encaustic method.

Karon is fluent in a variety of mediums – often choosing to work in one or more at a given time as their inherent sensibilities reflect and embody her intent. In a body of work that continues to evolve, encompass deeper dimensions, and touch thinkers and collectors world-wide.

"Interested in how our surroundings affect us, I am drawn to landscapes and influenced by time of day or weather, my paintings are intuitively created and often dictated by the painting itself as it evolves and develops through the building of numerous layers of encaustic, oil pastels, oil paint and other mixed media as needed.  The finished work invites the viewer to experience a moment in time, a memory or a place long forgotten."

Karon’s work has been exhibited in the US, and is currently available at A Gallery of Dreams in Arizona. She teaches in the US and abroad and can be contacted for teaching via her studio website.