Statement
Urban Markings in Encaustic
I continue to find inspiration in the scarred, tarnished beauty of my native East Bay metropolis and from travels abroad. My heart leaps at the gnarled, ravaged splendor constructed at the edge of vandalism – the sedimented evidence of the world we have created. Natural erosion, Time’s brush, leaves behind modern hieroglyphics, frayed fragments of lives lives lived.
In the streets of my urban world, I see beauty in the discarded objects, recycled materials, graffiti, torn flyers, and rusted metal. This provides a bridge between my inner world and the outer landscape of urbanization and globalization. I appreciate the life and beauty that urbanity offers us-- weathered through time, distinguished by history, and marked by human presence.
Nowadays I am engaged by the universality of the human experience I find in the residue of urban spaces. From these impressions I construct paintings from wax, oils, collage, and prints from my own photographs. The layers of wax create a sedimented history of my impressions and thought. Drawing on my lifelong interest in archeology, this mix-media, layered method of working never fails to captivate me. One never knows what one might find embedded in the paintings’ stratigraphy.
I love encaustic painting for its direct, physical and alchemical process. Each layer of wax, after it is applied onto a wooden panel with a brush, is fused with a blowtorch. The work is then altered through the application of additional layers, and by scraping off sections with razors and scratching into it with sharp points. Oil paints are rubbed into indentations and wiped off. This produces either a thick, gritty surface, or a thin translucent veil hinting at what else the painting might have been. The melting process can be unpredictable though, and sometimes strange results can occur. This forces me to be flexible and to remain open to the myriad possibilities that this medium allows.
