Knoxville Tennessee Encaustic Artist Neranza Noel Blount Biography

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artist Neranza Noel Blount paints with Encaustic (Beeswax and Damar Crystals). She is interested in chaos theory and how it relates to honey bees. She also collages with found objects and uses her pen & ink renderings and photography images that have been cut, torn, and then fused onto wooden surfaces and painted over with encaustic. She uses dental and pottery tools, brushes and a heat gun to manipulate the molten wax.

She started painting in oils at an early age and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Tennessee. She has received top awards for her works of art nationally and internationally. Her use of the medium of encaustic came out of her father’s profession as a beekeeper. Her husband has also since become a beekeeper. With her art she wants to help build awareness of the importance of honeybees and how the existence of man depends upon them.

Neranza Noel Blount

I was first introduced to Neranza during a weeklong encaustic workshop I was teaching at Arrowmont Center for the Arts in Tennessee. In that short period of time I saw her intently examine the practice of painting in hot wax and pigment, explore the possibilities of her creative ideas and develop new approaches to her painting. Her enthusiasm and serious interest was infectious. From painstaking studies of master copy to free spirited invention, Neranza practice of controlling the paint medium while visually giving shape to her ideas is paramount. Coming from a background that includes beekeeping, painting with melted wax seems like a natural calling. The careful observation of nature, her love of the body in motion and a responsive sense of color all contribute to her latest groups of paintings. Whether she is expressing the world through representation or abstraction Neranza’s painting comes from the heart, filtered through the senses and visualized for all to experience.

Crit Streed
Professor Emeritus and Artist

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Neranza Noel Blount: Encaustic Paintings

Exhibit at Unarmed Merchants, Knoxville, Tennessee, April 2010

By Jean Hess

Painter Jasper Johns once suggested that it is commonplace for artists to incorporate or manipulate an object in their work, but when they then repeatedly "do something else to it" the result might be a unique work of art. Local artist Neranza Noel Blount takes those additional steps in her encaustic (ie. wax) paintings. Blount takes photographs of the natural world, applies them to board, and then heaps layer upon layer of pigmented encaustic medium over the photographs. Typically the underlying image is completely concealed by the multiple strata of wax. In an interview Blount said she takes particular pleasure in buffing smooth surfaces to bring out the soft shine one can achieve with encaustic. She sometimes adds random scatterings of plant material that render a surface rough in places -- these surfaces tend to be less seductive. Blount also applies multiple layers of thin tissue paper with the wax pigment, and she allows the paper to bubble and crease. After that, by carefully breaking the bubbles to create erratic ridges and indentations, and emphasizing creases with added pigment to create what appear to be natural forms such as waves and tendrils, Blount ends up with surfaces that are complex and painterly, apparently conjured into being. Her best works in this show are the nearly monochromatic waterscapes like "Frozen Creek" that may be the most heavily re-worked yet visually the most stark.

Environmental concerns also inform Blount's practice. She wrote: "Little honeybees produce the wax as well as honey which is the only food that will not spoil. Honeybees are so important to our quality of life being our number one pollinator, that so many people do not realize. Besides having fun painting with the wax, I want to help educate the public about honeybees and maybe even encourage new beekeepers."

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“I first met Neranza a few years ago while working alongside her at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Neranza is a gifted painter whose unique exploration of the timeless medium of encaustic painting is taken to new levels in her interpretations of the natural world. In Neranza's paintings focused on landscapes and details from Frozen Head as well as her Dakota Winter series she has skillfully taken a medium used more than 3000 years ago by the Greeks in Ancient Egypt for portraiture to a powerful tool of expression, and abstraction in a contemporary practice that pushes the medium to it's limits, and delivers! Neranza is also a skilled draftsman with a superb sense of color and composition, and I would without hesitation recommend her for private commissions, or commercial endeavors.” March 4, 2010

by Kenneth Jameson Parker, Visual Artist/Graphic Designer at Sagamore Studios

AWARDS, PUBLICATIONS, AND EXHIBITS

2010 Knoxville Museum of Art - Artscapes

2010 Art & Culture Alliance Member Show

2010 A1LabArts February Show, Alter Ego; Spring Show, The Lemon Show; August Show, Oh, Ophelia

2010 Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority and Arts & Culture Alliance "Arts in the Airport" - Juried Group Show

2010 Unarmed Merchants - Solo show

2009 Knoxville Museum of Art - Artscapes

2009 Knoxville Museum of Art Community Gallery – Art to Ashes – benefiting United Mountain Defense Fund

2009 Knoxville Museum of Art Community Gallery – A1LabArts

2009 A1LabArts Spring Show, Recycled and Fall Show, Shadoz

2009 Art & Culture Alliance Member Show

2009 InSight into the Smokies – Juried Show

2009 Art & Culture Alliance National Juried Show – Smoky Mountain Visions

2008 Voted Best in Photography in Dogwood Arts Festival Print competition

2008 Art & Culture Alliance National Juried Show

2008 A1LabArts Regional Juried Show

2008 Blount Mansion – Solo Show

2007 A1LabArts Fall Show - Black & White

2006 A1LabArts Spring Show - Collaboration

2006 Mountain Laurel Gallery Show in Candoro Marble Factory benefiting South Knoxville Heritage Society

2005 A1LabArts Spring Show, Self Portrait and Fall Show, Process

2003 ValleyFest 2003 - Directed two short films accepted for screening

2001 ValleyFest 2001 - Photograph "Resistance of Memory" selected for poster representation

1999 International Library of Photography, Owings Mills, MD - Photograph "Amy Reading" selected for publication in Tapestry of Dreams ISBN: 1-892731-23-1

1998 Videomaker, Chico, CA and AFV, Hollywood, CA - Third place in a national video contest

1998 Age to Ages - Conceived, directed and assisted editing with Adobe Premier 11 music videos for theJ Lawhorn Band through Tennessee Production Center, Seymour, TN

1995-1998 "A Muse In" - Co-produced a three year series on Community Television combining art, comedy and philosophy. Skills provided included direction, skit concepts, videography, slide photography, and editing on a Video Toaster.

1994 "Take a Hike" - Produced assorted hiking documentaries of the Great Smoky Mountains for Community Television. Videographed, narrated, and edited.

1994 Arts Place, Fall, oil painting, "Sunsphere Showcase"

1987 Mayor's Art Auction, juried show, oil painting, "An Organic Gardener's Delight"

1987 Tenn Minutes, October, oil painting, "White Tiger Promenade" featured on the cover

1986 Mayor's Art Auction, juried show, designer dresses

1986 A Taste of Knoxville, oil paintings, Honorable Mention for booth design

1985 Every Wear Under the Sun, Dulin Gallery of Art, invitational wearable arts fashion show

1983 World's Fair Gallery, oil paintings

1982 Appal' Art Gallery, oil paintings

1982 World's Fair, French Pavilion, photography of Paris

1981 23rd Annual Spring Art Show, South Carolina, oil paintings

1981 OMNI Publications International, New York, Competition #19, October, Grand Prize for stitched portrait, "Einstein in Stitches"

All locations Knoxville, Tennessee unless otherwise indicated.

Images from this site may be reproduced with proper credits for non-profit. If profits are made, please share them with me. Thank you! Neranza Noel Blount