Art Gallery Exhibit: Oh, Honey! The World of Encaustic Art

Art Gallery Exhibit: Oh, Honey! The World of Encaustic Art

Join us for “Oh Honey! The World of Encaustic Art,” a collection of encaustic artworks created by artists, Victoria Eubanks, Marco Montanari, Jane Guthridge, Patricia Aaron, and Kathy Fisher. Each masterpiece tells a compelling tale and captures the essence of this ancient yet contemporary art form.

Join us Thursday, August 17 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the PACE Center Gallery for an art reception celebrating “Oh Honey! The World of Encaustic Art.” During the reception, guests will be invited to enjoy a variety of honey-based desserts and have a chance to meet the artists. REGISTER FREE.

CURATOR’S STATEMENT

When I heard about the Honey Festival held at O’Brein Park during Parker Days, I knew what the perfect companion exhibition would be: encaustic art.

Encaustic is a delicious medium made out of beeswax, resin, and pigment. One of my favorite artists working in encaustic is Victoria Eubanks who helped me curate this exhibit. She told me how occasionally a bee would show up in her studio as she worked, drawn in by the fragrance of warmed beeswax. These visitors were simply curious; the most difficult aspect of having them stop by is taking care that they don’t land on the hot wax and get stuck in it.

FUN FACT

Historians believe artists began using encaustic beginning the 5th century BC, and that it was first practiced by Greeks who used it for painting portraits and scenes of mythology, as well as for coloring marble and terra cotta. The art of encaustic was revived centuries later after Pompeii was discovered and the Fayum funeral portraits were uncovered.

These days the medium of encaustic is much more accessible thanks in part to electric heating appliances and commercial encaustic paints. However, it’s still not nearly as common as other mediums, I suspect, because of the application process. (There is a cold form of encaustic, but for this exhibit we stuck with the traditional heated application.)

As a curator, I love encaustic art because you can literally see the layers of work and the thought process of the artist. If you look closely, you can see compositional elements suspended in the waxy layers.

THE VERSATILITY OF BEESWAX

There are so many wonderful ways to create art using beeswax and resin. In this exhibit, you will see most, if not all, of these following techniques.

FUSING: gently melting each layer of paint as it is applied to the layer beneath.

GLAZING AND COLLAGE: pure filtered white beeswax used as a translucent layer or to suspend collage elements.

IMAGE TRANSFER: laying an image created in another medium such as graphite, charcoal, pastel, ink jet photocopy, etc., face-down into warm wax. The wax’s adhesive quality grabs the image as it cools, so the artist only has to remove the paper to reveal the transferred image.

STENCILING: masking off areas in order to apply design elements.

IMPASTO: the build-up of layers and textures.

SCRAPING: carving into layers to expose colors and images in previous buried layers.

We hope you enjoy this exhibit and the knowledge that our versatile winged friend the honeybee has contributed to making our world even more beautiful.

Rose Fredrick, July 2023