Artist Bio

Chantel was born in Glendale California, but her family moved to Oregon when she was eight, so she considers herself a North West-girl.  She spent much of her childhood exploring the outdoors, catching insects, and observing the wildlife. While attending an alternative high school with a science and technology emphasize, her creativity was primarily expressed through dissection drawings and microscope illustrations.  To this day that scientific aesthetic is noticeable in her artwork.  After high school Chantel enrolled at Oregon State University, and although she started with a focus on biology and science, she ended her time in college with a Bachelor of Science in Fine Arts and a minor in Creative Writing.  It was during college that she discovered her talent for teaching while working as an art instructor at a local day camp, and her love of encaustic when she took an intensive course on the medium her senior year.  After graduating college she moved to South Korea with the man that is now her husband, and lived there for a year teaching English and traveling around Asia.  Since moving back to the States Chantel has earned her Master of Arts in Teaching and teaching license.  After graduate school she began painting with encaustic full time and has since been exhibiting regularly throughout Portland, and has  recently begun to show her work on a nation level.  Chantel lives and works in her North Portland home studio, where she is excited to use her teaching skills to offer workshops that spread the joy of working with wax.