I’ve been working with encaustic for nearly 10 years now, but still getting inspired by the developments of this natural medium. In an era when transparent media poured or sprayed over inkjet prints, the opposite of natural processes, beeswax is suddenly a unique and beautiful thing.
LPKaster Encaustic Panel
At the Craighead Greene gallery can be seen some recent work by Winston Lee Mascarebtas, all encaustic with a deep, unctuous encaustic overlay. He uses the ability of wax to alternately hide and then reveal some subtle compositions on a series of small (10″ x 10″) boxes. He didn’t price them too high, and sold about half of them before the evening was out. He manages to build the encaustic very smoothly over stripes or rich, deep color. I was especially intrigued by a cube of 12-14″ covered with a rich yellow. Another intriguing use of the medium is to trap carbon particles within the wax. Mascarenhas also uses Damar varnish as part of the mix, which probably increases transarency as much as it raises the melting point.
Mascarenhas Encaustic Panel 10\
When we walked in the door very late in the evening, it was the paintings of Krista Harris that immediately caught our attention. Her colors are stunning! These large canvases are very freely painted, a dialogue of surface and brush that completely renews the belief that there is much more to be done in the Expressionist manner, particularly when the painter believes in the possibilities of hand and brush to express their own relationship with pattern and color, unencumbered by boundaries.
Raymond Sa’a has found some exciting ways with leaf-shapes and line, and the beauty of veiled carbon traces. Martha was especially intrigued by the stitchery that held some of the scales of paper in place. Altogether, the three artists represented very different approaches but together make for an exciting display. Krista’s highly colored brushwork leads into the strong patterns of Raymond’s paper pieces, and then to the Mascarenthas encaustics, an enjoyable journey on a Saturday evening.
At this point, Craighead Greene is quickly becoming one of my favorite galleries, the space is large and leads one quickly through the separate spaces arranged for intimate encounters with the art. Instead of labyrinthine corridors, it is a series of small spaces joined by a major walkway. The lighting is excellent, and the gallery directors are easy to find and talk to.
