I came to my art career through the field of psychology and a deep involvement in the arts of Los Angeles in the 70’s and 80’s. As a psychotherapist I was always interested in the creative process. It wasn’t until the late 90’s that I began to re-explore my own creative needs. I took off from there both as an artist with gallery shows and a teacher of creative process. Encaustic became my medium of choice simply because I loved the luminous and textural quality of the wax.

Historical Dimension

With encaustic, I could do what I was trying to do with acrylic with better results. Over the years there is another dimension that has been added to the relationship I have with encaustic - I could never lose the history of the piece. The idea of never losing the history of painting was for me the same as never losing the history of my life. Looking back in time through various frames in life or painting, means that whatever lies beneath the visible surface of a painting is always available.

Transparent Progression

In other mediums the progression of a piece was never visible once a final layer of paint was applied. Using encaustic, the history endures in each present moment – the succession of the history thus creates the piece – visibly so. Leonard Shlain beautifully describes Jasper Johns work with encaustic in Art & Physics as a “translucent archaeological tell allowing the viewer to squint through the usually opaque of an artwork’s present and discern the ghosts of its past.” It is the absence of traditional definitions of time, the relativity theory of the continuous now - that makes encaustic fascinating to me.