I was living in California in the 90s and visited the North Coast town of Mendocino , where I found a cooperative gallery called , Partners , and saw collages by Pamela Hahn , incorporating photographic imagery , letters , and other objects . What struck me about this unfamiliar medium , was its capacity to move through time and the most translucent yet saturated colors I had ever seen .
As with most coop galleries , artists share time sitting in the space . It was my fate that the person I asked about Hahn ’ s work was Hahn , herself . She told me that she had learned to work with the medium in the R & F Paints factory in a small town in upstate New York . That town , Kingston , is 11 miles from the home I had lived in before moving to California . R & F opened their shop the year I had moved away . I would return to New York several years later and R & F ’ s studio space became part of my home upon my return .
I was intoxicated in the best way , in love with the smell , the colors , the accidents and the forgiveness of the medium . My earliest pieces seemed to me to be “ samplers ,” as most work is when one is experimenting with a technique and a new medium . ( Yellow Figure , and Mastery are examples .) Wet to dry became hot to cool , malleable to set , fluid to hard . I did everything I could with the wax but get a smooth , transparent surface . I imbedded things , built gunky layers , over-fused blooms into being , poured , transferred , revealed , burned and scraped my way through “ encaustic , the early years .” Eventually I gained some purchase on the process and could begin to access the expressive potential of pigmented wax .