Finally back to Encaustic Painting...

Once again, I am lax in posting on this blog.  Life has a way of taking me away from the computer.  Then its just like getting in touch with a real old friend, so much catching up that it seems over whelming to even begin.  Another thing, is that I feel I need to be significant and post something meaningful, rather than the facebook like updates that we are all so accustomed to.  So, I put it off and off, and then bite the bullet and post again.

I have been back at working on my encaustics.  I set up the studio and had a studio day with an art therapist /friend and that primed the pump for me and now I am in the mode again, and excited.  I have begun working on a piece, exploring map as art, or my life as a journey...I did a series of mixed media map collages...that I printed up on tracing paper and adhered with encaustic medium to a cradled hardboard.  As a jumping off point.

This is the beginning of the process.

The piece began taking on geographical significance for me..  Their is the Sea of Sicily, where my family is rooted...and Chicago where I grew up, all peering through the encaustic medium.

One of the things I found frustrating is that, the encaustic medium adhered wierdly to the underlying tracing paper background...but I decided to just go with it.


And continued to over lay collage imagery on top of the piece.

I then began to paint in areas, forming land and sea.

I also began articulating a series of
diamond shapes.  I love to make triangles in repeated patterns..something so satisfying in that for me..

A ship traveling across the safe waters, brought up lots of wonderful metaphors I thought I could add, ie the winds of change... being one that became a refrain in my mind as I worked.  A moon or a sun and a house to place at the center of the Heart Land, came next....

It still however, looks chaotic and disjointed...but is moving along.

So I added more collage elements, to bring grounding to the land, sea and sky as well as delineate the land and sea masses, using color.  Still the medium and paint, pool on the tracing paper, even with adding layers of medium inbetween colors.  But there is nothing else to do except go with the process, and see what emerges.

Close up of the Sea of Sicilia...

The land mass....

and sky line .....So this is as far as I have come with this piece.  I am sitting with it, planning on carving in, bringing in more contrast and pulling out more words, and perhaps revealing some of the maps in underneath.

So far so good.  I am engaged and excited by the process.  More to come.  I hope to get into the studio today and do more on this piece.  Have a great Sunday.  Ciao.

Soaring Bird Encaustic- Bird theme continues

Birds are a continuing archetypal  theme, or image in much of my art.  As a child, the only pet I could have, in our 3 floor apartment in Chicago was a parakeet.  I had many parakeets over the years, and developed my love and relationship to flying things from those early, tender and companionable memories.  

Here is an encaustic painting I did of a Soaring Bird, which is available for purchase in my etsy store.

Encaustic painting

10"x10" on cradled hardboard

“For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.”

D.H. Lawrence