Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Some Like it Hot

Some Like it Hot - that was the name of an art show held by the Metropolitan Arts Council in March.  Encaustic is the oldest style of painting in the world,                                                             The artist utilizes
beeswax mixed with pigment to create the art.  The form has developed over the years and has recently taken off as a challenging but fun medium to work in.  Now artists use beeswax, white or natural mixed with Damar resin.
After seeing the works of Paul and Greg flint, Michael Ziemer, Tricia Earle and others, I went back to my extreme4m scaprbooking materials.  I've been using beeswax on mat board, in my art for about two or three years now - mostly in making steampunk and Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite style collage works which were featured in a show at Milagro Studios in 2010.  At the time, I didn't now about the resin or that special backing boards were made just for this type of art.  After Some Like it Hot, I was so fired up (forgive the bad pun) that I started a couple of pieces on canvas.  It was only after I spoke with current encaustic artists, that I learned, canvas was a poor choice because the wax would crack as the canvas swelled and shrank with the a temperature.  At the suggestion of Tricia and Michael, I headed to Suburban Paint Co where the highly knowledgeable Brad educated me on the materials, brushes and mediums available for working with encaustics.  And I've
been having a blast ever since.
I heated the wax on my canvas projects and peeled off all the photos which I'd transferred to canvas and sealed them in wax on some board art I'd found at Goodwill. I'm doing of two fun series of encaustics: one on the downtown area using photos my granddaughter and I took downtown, and a number of panels on the The Art Village at the Far West End and Pendleton Street.  These are not art, but more like a kind of Where's Waldo game utilizing photos of the buildings and people I've come to love and know ever since I lived in the area in my studio in 20078 and 2008.  I wanted to capture all the people, studios and galleries which welcomed me into the art scen4e here and acted as inspiration and support. Being an artists can sometimes be lonely and tough - emotionally and financially - especially when one puts a lot of soul out into the world through their work.

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