Encountering Encaustic
A young artist --Shawna Moore-- moved in next
door and befriended me. She took an encaustic
workshop from Santa Fe painter Ellen Koment
(Encaustic Arts Magazine, Summer 2012 issue).
I had never heard of encaustic, but I loved the
paintings Shawna made with it. They had layers.
There could be series. I took the workshop.
In 2004 I married a Native American man I had
been dating and moved to his pueblo. He built me
an incredible studio, looking out on the mountains.
For a while I continued painting with acrylic,
completing a series on baskets, then one on petroglyphs.
The baskets referenced aspects of my life
and psyche such as the Native ceremonies. I felt
they were alive. The petroglyph series inspired a
pilgrimage to California’s Little Petroglyph Canyon
for a firsthand look at the ancient images pecked in
rock. I dreamed they came to life at night, left the
rocks and moved around. My husband’s culture
continues to influence me profoundly.
Techniques I practiced with acrylic served me well
as I began working more with encaustic. Layering
the wax felt natural. I loved the immediacy of the
torch, the very idea of playing with fire. Since I had
Harriette Tsosie
Aspen Glow, 5”X5”, 2006, Encaustic on panel.
been trained to paint representationally (set up the
still life, draw it, then scale it up on the canvas),
that is what I tried to do. Even though landscape
had never been my subject matter, I now lived in
a landscape I couldn’t ignore. Aspens became the
subject of my first encaustic series. I carved into the
Phosphene Glyph #5, 30”X15”, 2007, Acrylic on paper
on panel.
wax, pushing pigmented encaustic into the grooves
to create the tree trunks, cross hatching
for the bark. Tedious. Creating images with
encaustic proved difficult. Once I lit the torch, my
images moved, melted, sometimes even disappeared!
I was no longer in control.
Portfolio
15
Winter
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