Art Philosophy

This is where you tell why you've started this blog and what you will do with it. I'm all for convention when it serves a purpose, so here goes:

I love to paint. My medium is encaustic, which means: A paint consisting of pigment mixed with beeswax and fixed with heat after its application. I, personally, use crayons as my pigment instead of purchasing the very costly pigments available online.....which are probably better but have far fewer color choices. :-)

Encaustic is great for several reasons. My favorite is that you can build up texture with the wax very easily and the paintings take on a deeper dimension. It's also great because dry time is almost non-existent. The wax is dry as soon as it's cool. I can also make easy changes and fixes by simply scraping off whatever I don't like.

This medium can be tricky, though. It is not like painting with oil or acrylic....or watercolor for that matter. The wax tends to harden as you try to paint and you can not mix and blend colors on the canvas very easily. Artworks are also tricky to transport as you must avoid too much heat and bumps and scrapes can easily gouge the painting. I'm sure the "real" encaustic mediums, which include resin, are a bit sturdier but a little heat, gently applied, usually fixes small "owies".

My husband introduced me to encaustic painting after attending a small seminar at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Art in Alabama. I ran with it from there. Last year I was invited to be an "Artist in Action" at the MMFA. It was the first year that artists demonstrated and also shared their art form with participatory activities for attendees (which means, people got to paint encaustic with me). It was really fun and when I was invited back this year we packed up the family and drove back to Montgomery from Texas, where we had since moved.

This blog was started because of that last trip. I realized that I had no business cards at the last minute and then realized that they would be useless, as I had no information worth putting on them. So, here is my business card fodder. A place to point folks to who want to see what I've done, can do or may someday do.

My philosophy of art is this: "If you don't have talent, have a niche."

o.k., I have two: "You don't have to be great, you just have to be brave."