Encaustic...How do I love thee, let me count the ways

Color

The vibrancy and saturation of color in encaustic is mesmerizing.  I like the boldness, the vibration that comes off the piece.  One of my favorite colors right now is the cadmium yellow-its like painting with liquid sunshine and the essence of sunflowers.

Luminosity

The way that layers of wax reflect the light back to your eye makes the artwork seem to glow.  A testament to how difficult it is to photograph encaustic with out a glare.  It is particularly impressive of an effect with landscapes of light and portraits. 

Texture

The variety of texture you can sculpt, imprint, mark-make, pour and smooth over into an encaustic piece is endless.  It makes me think of novel ways to use common things to enhance the texture of my paintings.

History

Encaustic has been around as long as Chinese Medicine (my day job for now) Ancient portraits have been found that are still vibrant and well preserved.  Inundated with technology all around us there is something reassuring that some things do not change.

Spontaneity

This is an encaustic quality that I find most terrifying and most gratifying.  Encaustic is heated to almost 200degrees to maintain a liquid state, once it cools it becomes solid.  There are methods to manipulate it into a liquid again but the amount of time it remains workable is short.  I find this to be useful to curb the voices of self doubt and criticism in my mind to allow me to be in the moment.  

"The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of the Divine."