Cynthia Spillman

Roll Up Project is pleased to present recent works by Cynthia Spillman. Spillman’s abstract paintings feature layered textures and shapes that crowd and overlap in the confines of the canvas, creating compositions rich with energy and activity.

Spillman’s studio has distinct areas for painting and for encaustics, but the resulting artworks are constantly in dialogue with each other. For example, the loose and experimental nature of her encaustic technique informs the shapes and textures evident in the larger oil paintings. Spillman willfully bends (and sometimes breaks) the traditional rules of encaustic painting, using the wax as a sculptural element and embracing the uneven textures achieved from working it by hand.

Two paintings fill the window on Harrison Street: Wind Eye (2022) and Deeply Truly, Really (2024). Both paintings contrast inky black elements with ochre yellow, red, and pinks. Spillman’s research on Norse imagery and history inform these works, evoking the texture of stone carvings and the stories of warrior women.

Around the corner in the Third Street windows, Shield Maiden (2022) is hung alongside four small-scale encaustic paintings. In Shield Maiden, pink and white forms dominate the dark background, accented with ochre yellow and ruby red. The encaustic paintings hint at figuration, sometimes including birds, houses, figures, or other recognizable imagery.

All of Spillman’s paintings provide a point of entry, whether it’s a figurative element or a decisive shape that seems to hover on the canvas. If this point of entry is accepted, the viewer enters into a world that is unrecognizable but filled with pillowy forms and mottled patchworks in engaging colors, a soft landing place if there ever was one.

About the Artist

Cynthia Spillman is a painter, actor, and voice artist based in Aptos, CA. She spent several years in Hawaii as a designer, farmer and radio DJ. Spillman attended Santa Monica College of Design, Art and Architecture, a school centered in an idiosyncratic “free rein” approach and immersion into the study of several disciplines at once. Her work has been exhibited at the Monterey Museum of Art, Minnow Arts, Museum of Encaustic Arts, and Sebastopol Center for the Arts, among others. She is the recipient of two Develop grants from the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County.

Learn more about Cynthia Spillman’s work at cynthiaspillman.com or on Instagram at @cynthiaspillman.