A Focus on Education Dietlind Vander Schaaf I met Darin Seim, R&F President, the rst time I attended the International Encaustic Conference in Provincetown in 2012. I distinctly remember swooning over the array of encaustic paints and Pigment Sticks® at the R&F booth. In 2017, when I took over the Maine Coast Encaustic Retreat from founder Kim Bernard, I reached out to R&F to see if they would donate some encaustic gesso or a few Pigment Sticks® that I could share with my students. I was connected to Heather Roberts who oversaw donations, and she asked me to put together a much bigger wish list of materials. When the box from R&F arrived, it reminded me of Christmas mornings as a child. It was so exciting to open it and see all that fresh beautiful paint. As my teaching took o , Heather invited me to become one of eight Core Artist Instructors at R&F. This program came with a high level of materials support and enabled me to begin doing live encaustic and Pigment Sticks® demos for retailers. In 2018, Heather stepped down from her position, and I left my full-time job in development at Maine College of Art to begin working for R&F remotely from my home o ce in Portland
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