“When a piece has turned out well, it is an amalgamation of intention and discovery. It is allowing  and inviting the art spirit”.

For me,  making art is close to prayer because I am noticing the miracles and profundities of nature.  When my work is going well,  I feel connected to and empowered by the universe.  I am drawn to human beings and the curiosity of their nature and I’m interested in what motivates, informs and impassions us.  When I am painting, I’m held captivated and elevated by the process of noticing, feeling, and problem solving .

I love painting in encaustic because it’s spontaneous, organic, unpredictable, luminous, tactile, essential, raw, elemental and natural.  Painting with bee’s wax is more about the process than the outcome so, for me,  it’s a metaphor for life.

My favorite materials are encaustic wax, but I sometimes incorporate oil, acrylic or photographs.   I like layering and building , scraping away, incising into, dribbling on, pouring or painting the molten wax.  The end result can be either buffed to a luxurious high shine or left rugged and textural.  Encaustic has a dreamlike quality and the paintings are a sensorial pleasure as well. 

 

My favorite tool is a blow torch.  It melts and swirls colors together creating its own private rivers, planetary surfaces, reveals hidden shapes in the wax.  It reveals buried color, fuses and softens the work.

I was taught how to paint mostly by artist friends and a few “teachers of art”.  What I would most like to unlearn is that accidental art is ”bad” art.  I now embrace “mistakes’ and incorporate pieces of less successful art into new pieces.  I have grown to like taking the risk of making a painting that has no blueprint or expectation.  For me, encaustic painting is taking pleasure  in the unpredictable or unknown.   While certain rules, theories, standards, and laws  of art are incredibly useful,  obeying them at all cost involves censorship.  It is my absence  of formal training as an artist that affords me a sense of freedom that  lets me express with freshness, whimsy, and a sense of innocence.

I do the work I do because it helps me to explore the wonder of life.  Many times I photograph, draw, sculpt, and paint the same subject until I feel satisfied that I have a better understanding of it.   I use whatever feels right to me at the time but I usually draw with pencil or charcoal first to help me understand the subject or concept in an intimate way. Including fragments of ephemera and memorabilia helps me to explore the connection to my ancestors and our personal stories. 

My current work explores layers, veiling, shrouds and coverings.