How to explore encaustic

Have you ever wondered about encaustic paint? How does it work? What do I need? How do I use it?

My Cooled Palette

I'll have some answers this Saturday and Sunday, October 22 and 23, 2011, at Plaza Artist Materials here in Nashville from 12 to 3:00 each day. Plaza's address is : 633 Middleton Street, located on the corner of 7th Avenue South and Middleton Street one block off of Lafayette Street. 


I'll be demonstrating the handmade paint produced by R and F Paints, which is my favorite brand. These encaustics are high quality, color dense, and silky. Their website is a treasure trove of information.

Encaustic work can be subtle:

Snuffed

© 2006 Kathryn Dettwiller

Encaustic, matches, plaster on wood

13 X 13""


Or encaustic can be glorious in color:

Hot Window

© 2007 Kathryn Dettwiller

Encaustic monotype

12 X 9.25""



Visit their website for resources, Q and A, workshops, and more.
and visit my page, The Buzz About Encaustic.


Drop in on Saturday or Sunday at 633 Middleton Street (Plaza Art Materials) to try it in person!

Paint, Paint, and More Paint

In an earlier post I remarked that I was ready to paint again with vigorous, big strokes. That meant OIL PAINT.
I haven't used oils in years.

When I began using encaustics in 1996, I was smitten. I left my old medium, oils, for a new one. I loved encaustics then and I still do, but the limitations of the hot wax make it challenging to work in a larger scale. The wax hardens before I can make a long stroke of paint.

Then I unpacked my oils. Yikes! Absence did not make my nose grow fonder. The odor was so pungent that my allergies rebelled.

But, I reasoned, oil paint is compatible with encaustic paint.

So I squeezed out some oils, heated up the wax, and painted. The painting was awful. The surface of the painting was gobby, the design poor, and the smell of the oils made my head hurt! I'd been away too long, and now the odor was a problem. I put the painting away.

Still yearning to paint boldly, I remembered an old stand-by of mine---black and white tempera paint. Powdered tempera is a liberating medium since it is quick to dry, can be made thick enough to have some heft, and it's cheap.The flip side, though, is that it can be brittle when dry. The first "Brain-Drain" painting, Study #2, was crumbly and fragile when it dried.

©2011 Kathryn Dettwiller  Study # 3, Charcoal, Acrylic on Paper,

26 x 20"

Since I had acrylics on hand, I thought they could substitute for the tempera. Here I worked some black and white as well as colored acrylic into the charcoal base layer. The finished work is now mostly acrylic paint without the brittleness of tempera.

Water, Water Everywhere

 © 2010  Kathryn Dettwiller    Flood  Encaustic on Claybord  12 X 12"

Water can be so destructive. The people in Japan know that firsthand. Nearly a year ago, Nashville was flooded...not by a tsunami, but from torrential rain.The Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission put out a call for submissions for their juried show, Spirit of the River, and my painting (above) was accepted.It will be on display in their Metro Arts Gallery until May 6th. Stop by and see what 14 area artists visualized about the Nashville Flood of 2010.

Let Me Count the Reasons...

First, a list of all the rational reasons that I use encaustic:

1. Color: The colors are vividly rich. The suspended pigment in the beeswax allows the brilliant colors to sparkle with energy
2. The colors can be opaque or transparent, and can be applied thinly (glazes) or thickly (impasto)
3. There can be total coverage of one color with another, with no bleeding through
4. Line elements can be as varied as you wish: thin, thick, scraggly or sleek
5. Infinite texture capabilities: Textures are easily created, literally and figuratively speaking. From silky smooth to rough, bumpy textures, from the illusion of texture to the real thing 
6. The surfaces of the work can be textured, smooth, poured, scraped, dipped or incised
7. Forms can be created 2-dimensionally or 3-dimensionally
8. Wax has an adhesive quality that is good for embedding, pasting, or collaging
9. It is quick to "set up" (that is, become a permanent, finished artwork)
10. Reworking possibilities are endless, since the wax is malleable with heat
11. Encaustic readily lends itself to image transfers
12. The layering that is inherent with encaustic gives a sense of space and time
13. Encaustic is one of the cleanest and least messy media for the artist
14. It is non-toxic when properly used
15. It has a sweet smell

Next, a few of the subjective reasons:

1. From the moment I began using wax, I felt an affinity to the medium 
2. I love the feel of the cooled paintings and the lingering beeswax scent
3. Paraphrasing from Reni Gower, curator of the show, The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic, wax/encaustic work has a "seductive surface, luminous color and ethereal image layering"
4. Encaustic informs my work with the hazy, muted quality that is inherent in memory...necessarily out of focus, but nonetheless, genuine in its authenticity
5. Encaustic is a challenge to use. Too much heat, and the image is forever lost...like a fleeting idea that escapes into thin air.

Encaustic Revival

A Tray of Many Colors

Jasper Johns is credited with reviving the use of encaustic paint for contemporary artists. It is said that he wanted something that would help his paintings dry faster, and he remembered hearing about the wax paintings of ancient Greece. So, voila! the old becomes the new again!

After Johns' show at Leo Castelli Gallery in 1958, many other artists were mesmerized by encaustic's spell, including Brice Marden, Lynda Benglis, Nancy Graves, Kay Walkingstick and Arthur Dove. Today many contemporary artists use encaustic.

 I began using encaustic in 1996 when there was little information available about the medium. Trial and error is a great teacher! Today there is plenty of information both on the web and in print. One of the best information resources on the web is R & F Paints, who specialize in encaustic paint and pigment sticks.

When I am asked about my work and I reply that I work in encaustic, many people wonder what encaustic is.  If you click on the Buzz page above, you'll find some historical information.

The real question is why? Why use encaustic instead of oil paint or acrylics or any other paint? That's for the next post....

I've Missed Painting

Is it the fall air? I've missed painting. The stand-up kind. I had a discussion not too long ago about working methodology. For several years, I have worked with encaustic and it is most agreeable to work with the work flat, that is, parallel to the floor. The arm/hand movements are necessarily short and contained. After all, the wax cools so quickly that a short stroke is all you get, unless you heat it and move it around. Oil painting, though, is so different. The strokes can be however you like them to be. And if you change your mind, well, you can just do it differently. And I am a "stander" when I paint.
A couple of weeks ago I began some encaustic paintings on Claybord, smallish ones, 12x12". Before I realized it, I was dancing with the paint and an electric spatula...all over the surface. It was fun!!

© 2010 Kathryn Dettwiller Desktop Stack, Encaustic on Claybord, 12 x 12"

For a good while, I have made contained work. Easily contained on the surface of the board. But these, wow, these spilled all over the edges and I used some thread to visually rein in the shapes. To contain the bedlam of color and shape, I put a tiny thread fence that is useless. 

Hot Time in Cool Mass

The 4th Annual Encaustic Conference heated up Montserrat College in Beverly, Massachusetts, from June 11-13, 2010, and beyond. It was a jam-packed four days of panels, lectures, demonstrations, and for me, one day of art making in Miles Conrad's class, Off the Wall: Encaustic in Three Dimensions. Here http://montserratencausticconference.blogspot.com/  you can find numerous accounts of the goings-on. The conference was informative, empowering, and exciting. On top of that, it was FUN. Kudos go to Joanne Mattera http://www.joannemattera.com/ for organizing and directing the conference and to Montserrat College http://www.montserrat.edu/ for implementing and supporting the events. It was outstanding!

Best Foot Forward

One of the features of the conference was a presentation area for each participant who wanted to display one of their works. The organizers carefully delineated a one foot square section of wall for each conferee.

This is my work, The Day the Line Broke, which I completed before the flood in Nashville in May. How did I know that Nashville would be flooded?

Hot Wax, Cool Wax

Following the conference I took a workshop with Miles Conrad on Encaustic in Three Dimensions. What fun!! We dipped all sorts of objects, like wire, a paper towel, muslin, corrugated cardboard, foam strips, and seed pods into a container of hot wax. Our objective was to fashion orbs out of those unlikely materials. These are (clockwise) baling wire, monofilament with cable ties, and a strip of corrugated cardboard.

The entire class curated this grouping.

Our final assignment was to choose more than 2 of our "creations," combine and attach them to our substrate panel, and pour hot wax onto the panel, which had been taped to provide a containing "fence."

Here's my "creation":

Seed pods, twine, and jute combine with the monofilament line and corrugated cardboard strip on a field of wax.

And our final exhibition.

That's Miles!

Blue Like the Depths of the Unknown

I wrote three posts for this blog back in April and May. But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming “live”, life got in the way. In mid-May I decided that I needed a good beginning post. The other posts that I had drafted are here, too, in the Archive.  “Isn’t that just like an artist,” a friend commented.

Over May 1st and 2nd, Nashville received 15” of rain which flooded our city. If you ever thought about building an ark, this would have been a real test of its worthiness. The rain just kept coming. Places flooded. Places that never flood. It was an astonishing amount of rain, and the televised coverage of what was happening painted a picture of misery all over our city. Streets became rivers. Homes filled with water up to their ceilings. Basements soaked up what the saturated ground could not contain. People waded in water up to their chest. Soon, boats rescued trapped citizens. Cars washed away. People died. It was a shocking sight.

Here is a link to a YouTube video of the flooding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjaQoOdJvI&feature=email

During the flooding, my church had a river running through it. On Sunday May 9th as I was sitting in my pew, I surveyed the aftermath of one week of professional cleanup. There were no prayer books or hymnals, no cushions, no baseboards, nor drywall from 2 feet down. But there were a gracious plenty parishioners who partook in the communion of bread and wine and mourning for two beloved parishioners who died in the flood. They were on their way to services.

Mixed Media on Canvas on Panel          24" x 24"

As the rector was preaching, I was struck by his words and realized that the painting that I finished yesterday was influenced by the floodwaters. Earlier in the week, the upper part of the painting had been mostly fleshed out with overlapping pieces of encaustic monoprints printed on Asian papers. But the lower part (textured with hydrocal) was quite a challenge to integrate. After many starts and a variety of colors, I settled on Prussian blue. The darkness and deepness of the blue set the tone for the finished painting. Blue like a body of water. Blue like the somber stillness of nightfall. Blue like a saturnine mood. Blue like the depths of the unknown.

Heart Ache

On Saturday May 22, our oldest poodle, Zinca, died at home. I knew that it was coming. I stayed with her until she finally breathed her last. She would have been 13 next month.

I miss her terribly.

Losing a pet is so hard. We invest so much of ourselves in them, and they in us, that when the time comes to say goodbye, it is wrenching to the core.

In 1997 our first standard poodle, Zola, died. Some time afterwards, I painted this painting.After I finished it and looked critically at it, I realized that I had painted my feelings about losing Zola.

And now it is heartfelt again.

Heart Ache      Encaustic on Panel     24 x 24"    1997