1+1=1 Gallery > Artists > Darla Myers

Darla Myers

Artist’s website

Since studying  watercolor painting in a class in 1998 I have had a new focal point in my life of making and observing art.  I started in watercolor,  drawn in by it’s fresh and fluid nature. 

Currently depending on subject and mood (both me and the subject at hand), I also paint in acrylic and oil, however recently I have been concentrating mainly on encaustic painting-molten beeswax and damar resin. I am drawn to it’s luscious presence, as well as its translucence and sculptural qualities.

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Artist Statement

These works bridge my world from the mountains of Bozeman, Montana to the coastal present here in Eureka.

My wish is to remind us all to make connections with the everyday beauty that is frequently around, to take the time to see it with a renewed sense of awe. The cusps of the day, sunrise or sunset are the most magical times of day to me. Forests and stands of tree also hold a special power as they surround with vertical strength, branches sway in breezes, and sunlight dapples tree trunks and the forest floor. And now I have the added wonder of the coastline and the never ending motion of the Pacific Ocean.

Moving to Eureka, I left the comfort of a wide circle of creative friends in Montana to the isolation of a new place during the first year of the pandemic. My art has turned more inward as I have processed this unexpected move and the challenge of not knowing anyone here. Daily beach walks and year round gardening have infused themselves into my art in a new way, abstracted into colorful layers filled with movement, and hints of history lie underneath, showing through in unexpected ways. This seems to echo life’s transitions as we journey through, adapting and transforming ourselves within these changes, carrying pieces of the past while making new layers from the present.

About Darla

Darla Myers lives and paints in Eureka, CA. She works in multiple painting mediums including encaustic, cold wax & oil and acrylic. Her passion for color, and her curiosity keep her exploring, and learning new ways of rendering nature in art. Joyful, expressive color and degrees of abstraction are commonalities in her work.

Myers builds layers in encaustic and intermittently scraps and incises them, building a rich surface and leaving glimpses of under layers. Her encaustic paintings are multilayered (10-30+), with each molten layer fused to the previous using a butane torch. Over the past year she has also been painting in acrylic, again working in many layers to create more abstracted colorful works, infused with color and movement.

Born and raised in rural Southern Oregon, she escaped the hard work of ranching and became a Registered Nurse, (another kind of really hard work.) Along the way an Intro to Watercolor course in 1998 opened up the world of art to Darla. She has followed that thread and continued to paint, study and explore art-making since that introduction.

Being a Nurse, married to a Nurse made it fairly easy to follow mutual curiosity and love of the outdoors, and they have lived and worked in Colorado, Alaska, Montana and now Eureka, CA. Myers was actively teaching Intro to Encaustic painting workshops and showing art in Montana prior to a mid pandemic move to Eureka late 2020. Her spouses’ career as a Flight RN brought them back to the West Coast.