2017 Old Time Encaustics
Encaustics are paintings made with wax. Mine are worked in natural beeswax with added Damar Resin to raise the melting point. Encaustic painting gives the opportunity for additive and subtractive processes, scraping backing and layering back in. Each layer gets fused to the last creating a solid durable painting while creating many milky cloudy transparent layers. I love the connection with Old Time music which is played all over the world conjuring up times and places near and distant. We can catch glimmers of our ancestors and their struggles through the music played in back yards and porches even today. I think of a Christmas tune "I wonder as I Wonder", which carries a tonality and poetry from another time and place, but which connects and is animated in a new way in our modern context giving us a richer sense of being human in the context of past and future generations. This idea is reflected in ghost images of musicians behind the foreground musicians. In some pieces a golden muse or fire may appear pointing to the reality of this thing greater than the sum of the musical parts, this expression of unity among diverse sounds and textures which becomes something beautiful, unique and alive in the moment.
