What is encaustic painting?  It is also known as hot wax painting.  This technique was used by the ancient “Greeks” in shipbilding and they called it “Enkaustikos”, meaning to burn in.  Colored pigments were added to paint pictures.  In Egypt around 100-300 AD mummy portraits were painted.  Some of those paintings are still available for viewing today in museums.  In the middle of the twentieth century Jasper Johns reintroduced encaustic art.  Today’s encaustic artists are producing luscious, sensual art in many forms ranging from sculpture to  traditional wall mounted pieces.

Many artist today come to this medium from other disciplines like sculpture, printmaking or mixed media.  I am a mixed media artist who has fallen in love with working with wax.

Encaustics is visual as well as tactile.  I love working in layers, scraping, carving, stamping, painting, molding and fusing.  My fusing mechanism is a torch but some artists are more comfortable with a heat gun.  Many of the supplies I use for mixed media pieces are also valuable additions to my encaustic art.  For example I will include hardware, sewing notions, photographs, glass, seaweed and bark.  Sometimes the piece will be topped with tar, glue or shellac and lit on fire to provide and extremely interesting design.  The colors I use in encaustic art seem to be more subdued and soft and the pieces are more textural, translucent and sensual.  There is no end to how this medium can be presented, so learnng opportunities are always at a premium.

I am attending the seventh International Encaustics conference in May.  Spending this time visiting with the other approx. 500 attendees from around the world will add so much dimension to my work in this field.  There will be vendors, classes, presentations and shows.  I hope to bring this information back to Maine and use it in my own work as well as in my teaching.  I hope this article helped and if you have any questions please contact me here.

I dream of the day when I don’t spend enormous amounts of time trying to do something that I have no idea how to do.  Technology is one of the best things in our lives but at the same time for some of us it is also one of the most frustrating.  I know just enough to understand that something is possible and to perhaps put together various pieces of that thing.  I know where to look on the internet for answers but somehow the answers seem as confusing as the project.  This is my poor excuse for not completing the You Tube posting today.  I decided to make a slideshow of my work and did eventually do so.  I set up a You Tube account-partially.  I could not get the “Channel” for some reason and could not figure out how to get the slideshow from my account to the You Tube account.  At least I know I will have another 24 hours tomorrow to toil away towards that goal.  I do thank Nicole for the opportunity to do this when I’m not under the gun and I can take the time I need.  It was, and for me continues to be an interesting challenge.