“Twisters”
Encaustic and Wood on Panel
12″ x12″

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Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It’s crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? — Frank Gehry

This is a very comforting quote for me.  When I paint, I frequently have only a very vague idea or sometimes — no idea at all — of what I am searching for in the new work.  I start somewhere, and often, the finished piece is so far away from where it started, it’s unrecognizable.  One of my favorite things about working this way is that I discover things — such as shapes and images — that I just couldn’t invent.

I recently watched the excellent movie called “It Might Get Loud” – a documentary on the electric guitar told through interviews and a meeting between three generations of guitar greats: Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), and Jack White (White Stripes). I have loved the work I’ve heard by Jack White (such as the completely unabashed and fearless “Ball and a Biscuit”), but wasn’t really all that familiar with him.

He blew me away in this movie. He talked about the need to struggle in the process of creation, and if you’re not struggling, he says, do something to create a struggle. (And there were many more great quotes from him, which I’m sure will inform future posts).

Well, I definitely do struggle in my process; sometimes I’m sure it really shows; other times, you can’t even tell. It’s become far more rare for me to just breeze through a painting. (Dagnabit!)

“Jetsam-Flotsam”
Encaustic, Oil Pastel, Rice Paper and Ribbon on Panel
12″ x12″

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There may be several stages in the course of working on the painting where I think, “Oh, this is good.  Maybe I’m done.”  And then I do something else, and ruin what I had and have to go further to make what I’ve now got into something else good.

“Ship of Fools”
Encaustic on Panel
12″ x12″

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Sometimes I fear that I have lost the best stage of the work, but once I’m done, how do I know whether I did or not?  I really should document more of the transformative process.

“Emerging”
Encaustic, Rice Paper and Ribbon on Panel
9″ x12″

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These four paintings are four of my latest struggles; one is a reworked painting from 2008; another I’ve changed since I took the photo; no promises that they won’t continue to change, including the orientation and the titles.

How about you? If you’re a creator, do you struggle to achieve your final result, or does it come easily? Is your best work the result of a struggle or not? Under what circumstances do you create your best work? Let me know in the comments below.

Tornado with Debris Cloud, version 2
Encaustic on cradled panel
10″ x 10″ x 2″

I have completed two new tornado paintings; one was the one I started a few weeks ago while being interviewed for a Weather Channel segment about my tornado paintings.  It’s changed a lot since it was filmed in progress (final version above; first version below).

Tornado with Debris Cloud, version 1
Encaustic on cradled panel
10″ x 10″ x 2″

I really like both versions, though now the first version is available only as a Gicleé print.  I love the abstract qualities that appeared in both of these images.

The second physical painting, and third new tornado image:

Tornado Two-Step
Encaustic on cradled panel
10″ x 10″ x 2″

I think this painting makes the tornado seem more lyrical than menacing, lightly dancing across the landscape.

Both paintings are available to purchase; check the Tornadoes Gallery on this site for more information.

Jetsons’ Holiday
Encaustic on Panel
10″ x 10″

This is the second of my Organics series using encaustic.  I have started several more in this series in oil, and will likely attempt some in acrylic, as well.  And of course, there are all the sketches.

This piece went through quite a few changes during its creation.  That’s one of the challenging things for me about encaustic.  I may think I know where I’m going when I get started on a new piece, but things have a way of getting out of control when fusing each new application of wax to a melted state again (not necessary, but I love the process and especially the glassy smooth outcome) — however, it is fraught with the danger of losing edges and shapes that one already established.

This piece has many layers to it and a very thick coat of gorgeous translucent clear beeswax. Way down almost to the very bottom layer are some lovely shapes cut out of rice paper and coated in a celadon green wax, but you can only see memories of them now. There were also several strands of “beads” of wax paint in lime green that were very carefully applied, one bead at a time, that have now blurred to a few soft, hazy lines.

And, now that I have two solid little paintings and about 8 or 9 of sketches in my new Organics series, I also have a new gallery page on which to gather them all together: Organics.

Happy Together
Encaustic and rice paper on cradled birch panel
10″x 10″ x 1.75″ deep
©2009

Painting in Encaustic: Liberation and Challenge

For about the past year-and-a-half, I have been in a bit of despair over how to continue working in encaustic.

I started using encaustic paints in 2006. Encaustic paint is pigment suspended in a mixture of beeswax and damar resin that the artist heats and paints with while in a melted state (the paint, not the artist ) – you can read more about encaustic here.

My first attempts were simply thick coatings of clear wax covering small pastel drawings of tornadoes.  Then I began painting the tornadoes using the hot wax.  As paradoxical as it may sound, I found the demands of the encaustic medium really liberated me from my former work that was too tight or too representational for my own satisfaction.  One cannot be tight when painting in encaustic AND achieve a smooth surface, and I fell in love with the smooth surface and the unpredictability of what happens to colors melted in wax when you blow them around with hot air. For the next year or so, I was thrilled to continue working in hot wax.

I began a series of nuclear bomb paintings in encaustic, intending to paint about 100 of them, but my idea was too daunting for a subject matter that was so frightening. Having grown up in the days of duck-and-cover, I decided I couldn’t really live with that fright through the creation of 100 paintings, so I quit after completing only five nuclear bomb paintings.

I then did a political piece consisting of nine iconic images that I digitally manipulated, printed and then encased in hot wax: my “What Have We Become?” piece.  However, for most of my painting history, I have been primarily concerned with the formal qualities of art — just the beauty of the stuff on the canvas — and I always meant to avoid political statements, so this piece has (so far) stood as kind of a one-off.

Then I tried animating some encaustic paintings, but my physical set-up made that a very difficult process, so I have also put that aside for the time being.

After trying all of the above, I had a flash of inspiration and painted my set of poppy paintings (the four paintings starting with this one).  Simultaneously, I moved on to painting abstract works in encaustic.  You can see all of those pieces on my Encaustic gallery page.

In the beginning of 2008, I moved back to painting in oil again — which feels so much like home to me — and I also tried acrylic, which has now found a place in my work (when I want to work both large and fast).  But after that, I kind of hit a dead end with encaustic.  The rest of my work was becoming organic, but my next attempts at encaustic took on a design-y kind of rigid structure.  I did about 6-8 paintings like that this past summer at a workshop, and have been really unsatisfied with most of that work.  In fact, I have removed all but two of them from my Encaustic gallery page, though you can view them in the tiny thumbnail gallery below.

I’ve also tried working in ways that I see many other encaustic artists work — collaging paper and fabrics into the hot wax, scraping and carving, and embedding objects in the wax — but so far, for me, these have mostly been dismal failures.

Meanwhile, back at the easel, my latest work was taking on quite an organic shape (see the organic series on the Sketches page – now in it’s very own gallery: Organics), so I thought I’d try this imagery in encaustic as well as oil and acrylic; after three partial days of messing around with this piece, I am pretty happy with the outcome.  I’m preparing several more panels to continue my explorations in this direction.

This one, Happy Together, is just the first of my encaustic pieces for my new Organics series, and I do anticipate that I will be quite happy with subsequent pieces.  What do you think?

Confetti

Encaustic on Panel
10″x10″

This one is very highly textured, and looks really amazing in person.

As promised, here are 6 of my new encaustic paintings — 5 of these were begun at last weekend’s encaustic workshop at Majestic Ranch.  I completed them and created one new painting (so far)  after returning home.

I Want to Move It, Move It

Encaustic and Mixed Media on Panel
10″x10″

Blue Marble

Encaustic on Panel
10″x10″

Beezebra

Encaustic with Collage and Image Transfer on Panel
10″x10″

Lime

Encaustic on Panel
10″x10″

This one is rather minimal, but I love it!  It could be part of a diptych with the preceding or succeeding piece.

Green Sky

Encaustic and Collage on Panel
10″x10″

I’ve got 3 more in progress and will post them as soon as they are completed.

I spent this past weekend with ten other members of the Austin group of Texas Wax in an encaustic painting workshop at Majestic Ranch in Boerne, TX.  Boerne is a lovely little Hill Country town located not too far from San Antonio.  Majestic Ranch is an Arts Foundation atop a hill with classrooms for painting, printmaking, ceramics, photography, sculpture and more.  It also includes a pavillion and gazebo…and many breathtakingly beautiful views of the Hill Country.  When R&F comes to Texas, this is where they hold their workshops.

Early Saturday morning, I met up with the other Texas Wax artists in the hilltop classroom for the two day, all-day workshop.  It was wonderful — kind of like being back in advanced studio classes at art school — each of us working on our own creative projects, and meanwhile chatting with other members of our art tribe.  Only this was over in just 2 days instead of a whole semester, so there wasn’t much chance to watch each other’s creative development, nor to get to know each other much better.  We did hang out for awhile after the Saturday workshop, over dinner and a beer at a brewpub in Boerne.

It was so great to share techniques and tips with the other encaustic artists.  Daphne Holland showed me how to use the little BernzOmatic torch, which is the tool I had been needing all along, but I had envisioned something much bigger and feared setting the house on fire.   This is basically just a bigger butane lighter, and can be used to really localize your heat source without blowing the paint all around (depending on your technique).  Roxie McCloskey demonstrated how to do an image transfer (the proper way) — something I’ve been wanting to do, but my first experience with it had been excrutiating, so I’d avoided it since then.  It doesn’t have to be painful, it turns out. 

I had brought ten 10″x10″ panels with me, all my encaustic tools and supplies, and what I thought was plenty of paint.  I actually ran out of 2-3 colors on day one, so I couldn’t complete a few paintings that I had started that day.  The second day was a much more productive day for me, and I came away with 1 finished and 6 other nearly finished paintings.

I want to thank Roxi McCloskey and Daphne Holland for organizing this event, and Majestic Ranch for allowing us to hold our workshop at their wonderful facility.  And my husband for driving us down there, bringing me lunches, keeping me company at the lovely little Acorn B&B, and being the really super great guy that he is!

You can see some pictures from the workshop at the Texas Wax website.  Tomorrow I’ll post pictures of the pieces I have finished so far.

I’m pleased to announce that the encaustic group I belong to, Texas Wax, has just unveiled their new website and blog — designed jointly by artist and web guru extraordinaire Haley Nagy and yours truly.  Please feel free to check it out while we continue getting our artists added to the site.  There’s already plenty of information there: history of Texas Wax groups, upcoming classes and exhibitions, photos from previous exhibitions, resources, and plenty of ways to get involved. Link to Texas Wax website.

Traces

Encaustic and Mixed Media on Paper Mounted on Birch Panel
12″ x 12″

I think I started this painting almost two years ago! I was never quite satisfied with it, though. There was something about the left-hand side of the painting that I just could never resolve. In the process of my attempts to resolve the left-hand side, some of the crispness on the right-hand side got literally blown away, since it is encaustic, and I am using a hot air gun to fuse the layers of wax.  The air tends to blow the paint around and blend it together, which I used to my advantage in the nuclear bomb, tornado and poppy paintings, but I had carved the stems into this painting, and carefully filled them in with oil paint.  Subsequent workings blew those lines around, the little ball-shapes got smushed or distorted, and I eventually put the piece aside until a couple of days ago.

Update: I decided the dark piece of raffia was too much of a divider, and also reworked some of the shapes and lines I had lost in the process of working on this piece.  Some little bits of raffia remained embedded in the wax, and I kind of like that.  So I think I’m done…time will tell.

Here’s the only picture I have of what it looked like up until a couple of days ago:

On the left is what it looked like the morning of March 31st after a couple more working sessions, while on the right is how it looked on the afternoon of March 31st:

It is encaustic and mixed media on watercolor paper mounted on birch plywood, 12″x12″.

If you have a suggestion for a title, I’d love to hear that.  I can’t recall the name of the dried plant that inspired this piece…

Texas WAX Austin Artists First Exhibit at Bay6 Gallery and Studios

What a great opening! So many people showed up, and once again, Sharon had some of my work very prominently displayed, for which I feel deeply honored! The yellow poppy paintings on the front wall are mine.

View some random photos from the event (click on the thumbnails):

“Crossing Over”
Encaustic on Board, cradled
12″ x 12″
©2008

I’ve been working on a complicated 20-panel oil painting for most of the year, which is getting close to completion (for an October show in Ft. Worth). On Friday, July 18th, I had the need to loosen up, so turned back to encaustics, which are just naturally a looser kind of medium.

Here are the rest of the 10 new pieces, in top to bottom reverse order of completion:

“The Gathering”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″

“The Buzz”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″

“Swarm”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″

“Candyloaf”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″

“Shameless Exuberance”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″

“Twilight Town”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″

“A Ripple in the Universe”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″

“Firefly”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″

“Orange Point”
Encaustic on Plywood
12″ x 12″