Patterned Encaustic Paintings

  My work uses nature-based patterns to vividly represent human emotions and experience, and to convey not just beauty but tension. These paintings represen an intersection of information, emotion, physical limitations, and the natural world. The patterns and colors inhabit spaces that are similar, but not the same – suggesting multiple realities in the same composition. Each composition is engaged in some form of conflict, framed in the context of differing perceptions of national identity, economic instability, and uncertainty. 

My paintings interweave patterns painted in vibrant colors and textured surfaces. I use metal tools, along with stencils I create, to make and alter designs. The painting process is both meditative and reflective. The image created is activated through nuanced changes in form, multiple placements, or new placements and patterns. Information is hidden, built up, excavated, and scratched into the encaustic paint. Without consciously thinking about it, I place parameters and restrictions on almost every level of decision making. I limit my palette or the values and intensity of colors; color and materials are layered in a particular order to symbolize cultural sediment; I commit to the imprint of patterns, branded into wax, as part of the work’s history and sometimes don’t manipulate the paint past this point so as not to alter the authentic imprint that has been burned in time; when I fuse the paint with heat, using a heat gun or torch, I don’t try to control how the paint melts ­– my goal is to accept the heat’s effect on the wax, rather than try to control it. Like the human condition, my process is a dance between intention and acceptance.