ARTIST STATEMENT

My path as an artist diverged when I began to study encaustic painting. Throughout high school, to college, and then as a high school art teacher, my work tended to be realistic not abstract, observational not fantastical, and drawn not painted; figures, landscapes, interior studies in charcoal, sometimes ink, sometimes gouache, mostly a study of light and dark to create a sense of form. When I first began to study encaustic painting, I found that I lacked the experience and the control with the heated wax to be able to paint realistically, and I became much more abstract with my imagery and mark-making

I have recently found a way to bring my work full-circle; to connect my encaustic painting style to my charcoal figure drawing technique that I have used and loved for so many years. Using my own sketches as a reference when I paint, I will push and pull the values of the figures, building the lights and the darks to allow the 3-dimensional forms of the figure to take shape, to recede and emerge out of the middle tones. 

Encaustic painting has allowed me to abstract forms in a way that is both measured and unexpected. It is planned and controlled, until it isn’t.  It then becomes a tale of layers, reactions to what came before, choices about what will remain, what will be concealed, what will be revealed.