Claybord
Featured artist: Elsa Muñoz
When Ampersand President/CEO Elaine Salazar visited The United States and Mexico: A Powerful Past, A Shared Future, a U.S. State Department Art in Embassies exhibition in Mexico, she was struck by a powerful painting titled Primordial Conversations. Upon closer look, she realized it had been painted on Ampersand Gessobord. That moment of recognition led to a full-circle connection: the artist behind the piece was Elsa Muñoz, a former studio mate of Louise LeBourgeois, who had first introduced her to Ampersand panels years earlier.
Featured artist: Paul Jackson
Paul Jackson is a master of noir pop art whose detailed drawings and paintings are often filled with dystopian humor, challenging the viewer to confront the absurdity of modern life.
Featured artist: Jess Wathen
Jess Wathen is a unique talent whose glowing oil paintings of wildlife blend masterful brushwork and texture. Inspired by comic book, video games, and metal music, Jess's work captures the balance between reality and imagination.
Featured artist: Emily Boyd
Drawing a grid by hand and then meticulously filling each small square with marks is slow and quiet. The process remains significant to Claybord artist Emily Boyd as she has learned that quietness isn’t necessarily based on the noise and commotion level around us but that which is inside our hearts and minds.
Featured artists: Ampersand Artist Partners
As the year wraps up, we wanted to highlight a few of the artists that graciously partnered with us over the year and shared their love of Ampersand with the world. We sent each of the December artists an Ampersand panel and one of our new 5x7 or Walnut Floaterframes. The task was to paint their artwork of choice and then frame it in the Floaterframe.
Featured artist: Vic Hollins
Inspired heavily by the desert, patterns, and color, Vic Hollins' illustrations are vibrant and complex. Cacti surround her bright red historic bungalow studio in downtown Tucson, AZ sparking her creativity.
Featured artist: Jim Musil
After what started out as a peaceful hobby, Claybord artist Jim Musil has found much success sharing his paintings on social media.
Featured artist: Amado M. Peña, Jr.
Amado Peña's art celebrates the strength of a people who meet the harsh realities of life in an uncompromising land and his work is a tribute to the Native Americans who survive by living in harmony with an adversarial, untamed environment. Amado’s artwork is defined by its bold color and form and dynamic composition.
Featured artist: Louise LeBourgeois
Chicago Claybord artist, Louise LeBourgeois, describes how her love of swimming in Lake Michigan carries over into her oil paintings.
Featured artist: Sally Maxwell
Sally Maxwell has been working with scratchboard for over fifty-three years and has helped to define it as a fine art medium. Finding inspiration in animals and her own colorful garden; each piece is a snapshot of the intensity that nature can possess in its quiet moments.
Featured artist: Caroline Adams
Caroline Adams, an egg tempera artist, discovered Claybord for her abstract landscape artwork. Inspired by the many places she has lived, her work draws from the colors, shapes, and lines of each place.
Archiva-Seal™: Only by Ampersand
Ampersand's exclusive Archiva-Seal™ ensures paintings won’t yellow over time due to support-induced discoloration. Learn why this critical process makes Ampersand panels the most-trusted surface among artists.
Featured artist: Lipstick Lex
Sarasota, Florida-based Claybord artist, Alexis Fraser, is otherwise known in the art scene as "Lipstick Lex". With an emphasis on promoting love, self-love, beauty, personal empowerment, and creative inspiration through her subjects, Lex's innovative method delivers chic and conversational art that is equally vibrant as it is unique.
Featured artist: Andrew Houle
We caught up with Beverly, MA artist Andrew Houle, who uses oil on Ampersand Claybord, for a Q&A session. Houle, recognizing influences from Hopper and Rockwell, has worked towards creating a personal narrative through his paintings connecting the viewer to his or her community.
Featured artist: Gordon Corrins
Gordon Corrins' incredible wildlife artwork depict portraits of a wide range of animals, but his dynamic style and strong contrast of light and shadow is what brings them to life.
Featured artist: Louise LeBourgeois
Louise LeBourgeois paints waterscapes like no one else, on Claybord, with oil. The water brings her back to the places she found magical as a child, and the paintings she creates are pure magic made from pigments, oil, and Claybord. Very few oil painters gravitate towards Claybord, but for Louise, nothing compares.
