Painting & Illustration

Ann Rhinehardt

Ann has loved nature and drawing for as long as she can remember. Originally planning to pursue a career in biology, she enrolled in a drawing class to fulfill a humanities requirement—an experience that unexpectedly reshaped her path. From that point forward, creating art brought her a sense of joy and fulfillment unlike anything else. She earned a B.A. in both Art and Biology from Colby College, followed by an M.S. in Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology. While working in cancer research for several years, Ann continued to nurture her artistic practice through workshops and classes wherever she lived. Although her life after Colby took her away from Maine, her connection to the state remained strong, and in 1991 she returned with her family to make central Maine her home.

Today, Ann works in a variety of mediums, with her recent focus centered on encaustic painting using beeswax. Her paintings are built slowly, layer by layer, forming visual stories guided by her emotional responses to the natural world. Each layer is fused to the one beneath it with a heat gun or culinary torch, allowing mostly transparent pigments and organic forms to create depth and luminosity. Viewers are invited to look through these layers, gaining insight into both her process and the evolving narrative within each piece. Encaustic gives Ann the freedom to manipulate the surface—building texture, carving into the wax, embedding materials, or achieving a glass-like finish. Many of her paintings contain thirty or more layers, reflecting the depth and complexity of human experience and our interactions with the world around us. Through her work, Ann continually challenges herself creatively, striving to express her love, awe, and respect for the natural world, and hoping that viewers feel that same sense of connection.