Pamela Smith-Hudson knows the power of a mentor. It was one of her painting teachers that connected her with Daniel Freeman, a master printmaker for Gemini G.E.L., who had printed for Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns. And it was Freeman who steered Pam to Johns’ work, introducing her to the medium that would become her muse—encaustic painting. “It’s steeped in antiquity but it’s very contemporary,” she says of the hot wax paint, which artists have been using since Greco-Roman times. “You can do translucent layers. You can paint realistically; you can paint abstractly.
