Dale Roberts: The Beauty and Permanence of Encaustic Painting

A contemporary painter working primarily in encaustic, Dale O. Roberts creates landscapes, cityscapes, and still lifes that explore how light, memory, and decay intersect. He began his art studies at Rochester Institute of Technology and earned a BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art in 1982. While still a student, he discovered encaustic painting and found in it a way to embody both surface beauty and structural permanence.

Dale grew up in upstate New York, where art was far from a typical career path. “The farming community had no clue that you could make a living as an artist,” he recalls. But from the age of five, he was drawing constantly, soon followed by painting. Much of his childhood was spent outdoors—fishing, building forts, and sketching from life.

That early attention to the world around him continues to shape his process. “It’s about the paint,” he says. “What is there, how do I respond to it, and what happens between the paint and the panel in front of me?” Working from sketches and observations, Dale returns often to the same location, collecting sensory data through drawing and note-taking. “Those interactions—light, place, people—give fuel to the why.”

His work has been exhibited at Gross McCleaf Gallery, Gallery 1261, Blue Heron Gallery, Church Street Gallery, and Art Nou Mil.lenni in Barcelona. As a teacher, he helps demystify ancient media like encaustic in workshops across the U.S. and Canada, including at R&F Paints, The Encaustic Center, The Encaustic Conference, and the Canadian Federation of Artists.

Listen to Dale’s full story on Radio Maine.