Is it just me or are encaustics just everywhere? What an amazing and fascinating medium. Ancient too.
Encaustic painting was practiced by Greek artists as far back as the 5th century, BCE. Most of our knowledge of this early use comes from the Roman historian, Pliny who wrote in the 1st century AD. According to Pliny, encaustic had a variety of applications: for the painting of portraits and scenes of mythology on panels, for the coloring of marble and terra cotta and for work on ivory.
Wax is an excellent preservative of materials. It was partly from this use that the art of encaustic painting developed. The Greeks applied coatings of wax and resin to weatherproof their ships. Pigmenting the wax gave rise to the decorating of warships. Mention is even made by Homer of the painted ships of the Greek warriors who fought at Troy.
Fayum Mummy Portrait
But perhaps the most memorable evidence of this medium is in the Greco-Egyptian mummy portraits of the post Alexandrian era. (1st century BCE - 3rd century AD) After the fall of the Roman empire encaustic work virtually disappeared except in its use as a medium for religious icons.
Its resurgence in the 20th century is due primarily to the availability of portable electric heating implements and the variety of tools that have made encaustic a far less formidable technique.
I recently had conversations with three wonderful practitioners of the art, Eileen Goldenberg, Rozy Arno and Jaime Lyerly.
San Francisco artist, Eileen Goldenberg began painting in encaustics about 8 years ago after almost 30 years as a nationally renowned potter. Eileen says that after seeing an encaustic piece in a show it awoke in her a new direction for her work. For her it embodies many of the tactile and technical aspects of the ceramic process, but also brings in the possibilities of reworking a much more flexible medium. She recalled the encaustic work of Jasper Johns and Diego Rivera noting that it was generally referred to as “mixed media” back then.
3 years ago Eileen began working on a series of paintings she calls the Teahouse series after the novel, The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery. She was drawn to the discipline of the Japanese tea ceremony. Eileen says that there is ” imaginative freedom within the strict boundaries of the traditional ceremony.” She relates that to the demands of wax as a medium. To date she has completed 350 paintings in the Teahouse series.
Eileen working on a 12-foot painting
Tea House #281
See more of Eileen’s work on her America Creates gallery: Eileen_Goldenberg
Don’t miss Eileen’s March 22nd and April 22nd Workshops: Intro_to_Encaustic_Painting
I spoke with Rozy Arno who works out of Oregon’s high desert country in Redmond. Rozy began oil painting when she was 15. Later she did pastel portraits, but eventually she found the planning process to rigid for her ideas. About six years ago she saw a show of encaustic paintings and it was love at first sight. “The wax,” she says, “It’s so fluid. It tells you what to do. You can’t really control it.” Rozy said it brought out the abstract painter in her with it’s deep, vibrant and intense colors. “Two things come out. The expression and the emotional release.”
“I have to say I don’t plan my paintings. It comes from, a ‘cosmic connection’ I feel from working with the wax and pigments.” “In fact one of my first works came spontaneously, “The Chasm” and a few days later she was looking through an astronomy magazine and found a photograph of a nebula that was amazingly similar, “almost identical” to her painting. Rozy went on to add that, “Sometimes the painting becomes an ‘inner spiritual journey.’ Many of my works, like, ‘View of Earth From My Rocket Ship’ have a space/science theme to them.” She continued, “Another, ‘Into the Slipstream,’ represents a conduit into the universe through which you gather creative energy to channel into the work.”
Rozy Arno The Chasm Into the Slipstream
See Rozy’s America Creates Gallery: Rozy_Arno
Jaime Lyerly
Jaime Lyerly is a student at San Diego State. She’s gone from English - to Art History - to Arts. “I realized that I was seeking creativity from many different angles, and then I finally had the guts to declare an art major.” “Now, as a child, if we were ‘caught’ doing art it meant that we were idle and must have some chores to do.”
“I began painting late, at 21, just 10 years ago, beginning to develop the necessary discipline. I was inspired to sculpt when I saw the work of Kiki_Smith. I was drawn to the figurative - away from the mechanical.” I started with body casts - of my self. It was a collaborative process. I began to work with wax by applying it to the plaster casts. Then I became fascinated with the sculptural qualities of the wax and I seek to work that to the limits of its plasticity.”
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