Dare to paint abstracts and the whole world opens up in front of you. Everything can be done and yet nothing has to be done.
—Annie DeFreest
In 2015 my father Jack gave me life altering advice… “Slow down, take a year and just paint.” I had picked up a paint brush just twice before this advice.
It is 2025 and I am in my third career, now, a working artist. My art is about the process of painting and the endless possibilities of abstraction. My intention is to simply start: Cold Wax medium is mixed with equal amounts of fine oil paint. With the piles of paint and wax on my palette I explore relationships of colors. Finally, I add texture and shape by intuition, creating paintings.
Admirer’s of art talk about “value” and “contrast” within works. I’m learning each day that I am brave enough to be in my studio, how these words relate to my color selections and final outcome of a finished work. I’m still new to this. Intuition is my guide.
The process of painting allows my soul to work through the value of my decisions and actions. The curation of contrasts and thoughts is my growth. Moving through my process of adding layer upon layer to an individual painting, then removing some of that same paint, adding texture, digging back into the history of a painting, then adding more paint, I take joy in knowing that I do not need to see the whole painting finished. Each layer applied is a step. I add one at a time. And it’s okay to see just one step. I do not need to see crafted to perfection the entire painting before I begin.
I come to painting from another range of vision: freely, unconditionally, spontaneously, and individually. As I choose abstract, I choose freedom. I choose that each viewer practice their gift of seeing my art with their heart. Through painting I have learned that there is a gentler way of seeing, a less ridged way of thinking, living with less certainty, and more play.
AnneMarie DeFreest has called the Mad River Valley in Waitsfield, Vermont home since 1972. She moved to Vermont full-time in 1986 along with her parents and created The Inn at the Round Barn Farm, one on New Englands finest hospitality properties and company. She is a published cookbook author. She now teaches classes in Oil Paint and Cold Wax Abstraction in the U.S. and Central Mexico and has a small gallery and studio on Main Street in Waitsfield, Vermont.
What is Cold Wax?
Cold wax is a compound that is made up of pure beeswax, resin and oderless mineral spirits.
Unlike “encaustic,” the wax used in this art form is room temperature. Cold wax is mixed with oil paint and applied with either a squeegee, palette knife, or brayer.
Textures can be created using anything ones’ imagination can imagine.