Arts
Read More ›
The Makers: Leslie Stoner’s Brilliant Encaustic Paintings
Meet the dynamic encaustic artist whose main tools include a blowtorch and a bread pan
Leslie Stoner is holding a blowtorch in one hand while we chat in her Green Lake studio. She’s spraying the torch across the surface of one of her paintings and explaining her process: how the flame heats the wax and fuses it, pushes it down or smooths it out in different ways.
As an encaustic painter—encaustic being an art form whose main medium is heated wax—Stoner utilizes a unique set of tools. In addition to her several blowtorches (which come in a few different sizes), she also uses razor blades, various palette knives, pottery tools and an assortment of baking tins.
Stoner spent her childhood years on a mink farm in northwest Montana. She moved to Seattle in 1997. From 2002 until 2006 she attended Cornish College of the Arts, where she earned a degree in painting and photography.
She first tried encaustic painting in 2005, while she was managing the studio of Betsy Eby, another local encaustic artist and one of Stoner’s early influences. Stoner’s work now shows at Abermeyer + Wood Fine Art in downtown, the Seattle Art Museum sales and rental gallery, and Friesen Gallery in Sun Valley.
Follow Us
Rearview Mirror: Godzilla, Cork, and a New Sushi Spot
Things I did, saw, ate, learned, or read in the past week (or so).
POPPING OUR SENSES I don’t think I’ve ever given much thought to a wine cork beyond the satisfying pop it makes when opening a bottle, but after spending a morning at DeLille Cellars in Woodinville with about 50 other people, I have a new appreciation for it. The occasion was “(Pop) Open Your Senses,” a…
Best Bookstore: Beguiled Books
This Pioneer Square darling is easy to spot: pink doors and candy-striped details mark its home near Occidental Square. Beguiled Books started in 2024 as a mobile bookstore, making its way from table to tent to trailer, and finally to its current brick-and-mortar space. Labelling itself as “Seattle’s Original Romance Bookstore,” Beguiled specializes in just…
Best Art Gallery: Foster/White Gallery
A pillar in Pioneer Square’s arts ecosystem, Foster/White Gallery opened in 1966 (then called Richard White Gallery) as the first space of its kind in the neighborhood. It soon gained notoriety for showing preeminent Northwest artists such as Morris Graves, William Morris, George Tsutakawa, and Dale Chihuly. In the decades after founding the gallery, its…
Best Museum: Seattle Art Museum
A vote for Seattle Art Museum is really a vote for three different art outings. The downtown museum pairs ambitious exhibitions with a global collection; the Seattle Asian Art Museum occupies SAM’s original 1933 Art Deco home amid the 43 acres of Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park; and the Olympic Sculpture Park puts art out in…