This week I successfully finished three small encaustic paintings with the "feel" I was looking for to translate my mountain experience at Hambidge into encaustic. I have been so in love with my drawings completed during my residency, that it took me two weeks to get back to my usual practice. To say it was a challenge doesn't even begin to explain how hard it has been. Part of the difficulty is the encaustic technique itself. There is a certain amount of preplanning necessary for the images I'm working on and the drawings from which they are inspired were so intuitively and freely created. Of course, as many artists have said before you are never the same artist or person, for that matter, yesterday as you are today. Never was that so true as with the project.I'm now looking at the solo exhibit in August and the pressure is on to produce more paintings. Although I won't call it pressure because I love having deadlines. There are many times when I need focus for my wandering creative spirit which like to experiment ad infinitum. So here begins my process of deciding size etc. for a twenty or more painting exhibit. Not that many weeks left!
June 18 & 19, Saturday and Sunday are the dates for the summer workshop in encaustic. Visit my website for details. What happens after a residency is a burst of creative thoughts that lead to new ideas that I will share in this workshop. Encaustic is, may I say, an elastic medium.
