Original artwork description:

This is a small encaustic painting: painted in highly-pigmented pharmaceutical-grade beeswax that's combined with damar resin. The resin makes the surface impermeable and hard once cooled. That's the other thing about encaustic: one paints hot (175 degrees F). Painting this way allows me to build up layers of colors and to manipulate the surface in such a way that intricate lines and swirls and other eddies of color become possible, in effect, not just mimicking the natural processes, but actually using the same forces (liquid to solid state, thermal and air currents, etc.) nature uses. The images look, I think, like the formations on finds on earth, in rocks, in the sky, in the ocean . . . plus the finished work has the natural luminosity and sheen of beeswax. This intricate, small painting is full of swirling and flowing energy; complex passages yield to more serene passages, deep purples, aqua and turquoise areas that resemble frozen water, white that is glacial is offset by bold oranges, and slight hints of rose. Because encaustic is multilayered, the surface is sculptural and the experience is one of looking into the depths.

Materials used:

encaustic paint, powdered pigment, oil stick on cradled panel

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