Before and After

I’ve been spending time reviewing some of my older encaustic paintings and have reworked a few of them, this first example shown above has changed completely from the original.

I had painted the Sugar Hill Lupines back in 2016 and at the time had done a series of lupine paintings. I used an electric tjanting tool and literally drew with wax on the entire board. Six years later I decided to melt the wax off and create an entirely new painting of the night sky in Joshua Tree State Park.

I’m much happier with the new painting and was glad I could recycle the encausticbord panel. This time I painted the encaustic layers using brushes and all of the mark making was created with pottery tools.

Vineyard in Tuscany was painted in 2012, the new version adds another dimension with mark making. I added pigmented wax and oil sticks to lighten the vineyards before I added the linear marks, and raised the horizon line, there was too much sky.

The painting of Crane Beach was a struggle from the start, I felt like I never captured the movement of the water and was unhappy with the placement of the land in the distance. The new painting of Sunrise was almost a complete do-over! I wanted to incorporate rich, lush sunrise colors along with a much stronger composition. I also added plenty of linear details using scraping tools. The original colors in the sky allowed the newer version to maintain its crisp color.

Next month is my one and only outdoor exhibition this summer, I plan to include these new paintings along with the Buddha collection, the miniatures, and weather permitting a few new soft pastel paintings.

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