Art Residency in South Africa
Encaustic Monotypes: Plant Portraits
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Edgar Degas
PROCESS
My two weeks’ residency at Driftwood Studios in Rainbow Valley on the Eastern Cape of South Africa explored the lush botanical variety of the region. As my artistic process usually starts with a nature walk, I foraged flowers, plants, branches and other natural materials. Because I did not have recourse to my full studio, I opted to create encaustic monotypes using a steel plate borrowed from Phoenix Steel at Crossways. Thanks to my absentmindedness that resulted in my losing a passport and not being able to return home to NYC to retrieve my encaustic supples, I was forced to research to find alternatives. I experimented with pine sap and wax (that did not work). Luckily, I discovered there was an encaustic supplier here in the Eastern Cape called Encaustry that created encaustic medium and wax sticks. I lost a week waiting for the supplies to be delivered, but was able to spend two weeks in the studio creating. I was told that this was the African way, you had to make do with what you had and arrive at something regardless.
With a combination of paraffin colored candles (compliments of Spar, Crossways), beeswax candles from St George Orthodox Church in Beacon Bay, some reconstructed mdf boards from late sculptor George Kockott, strips of linen sheets, tissue paper I had brought over from home, music paper, napkins, crayons and wax sticks, thread, I was able to put something together. I started with the steel plate but then opted for the regular household iron. The process evolved as each problem led to a small solution and then another unfolding into what became little parcels of plant portraits draped in tissue or linen. For me, the process of creating is as important as the product. Having to improvise on materials I would not have used forced me to create differently. These works, as a result, are not representative of my “usual” encaustic paintings.
Encaustic Monotypes
Plant matter, wax, linen, tissue paper, colored wax sticks, thread, fabric
Assorted sizes
Plants are so ubiquitous we take them for granted. By synthesizing them into portraits with the actual plant at center, I want the viewer to really see them in their intricacy and beauty. In a process that combined rubbings of the plants on wax paper transferred onto linen cloth or tissue paper and secured by melting colored wax within the folds that made the little package translucent, my aim was to put the plants front and center for the viewer. In an act that echoed Jasper Johns’ technique of using the wax to represent the image of the flag, these monotype portraits made from the actual plant plays with the ambiguity of subject and object in portraiture. Can the artist ever capture the essence of a thing so small and common as a plant through mark making? I also played with the ephemerality/durability of plant life by shrouding them in tissue and linen reminiscent of the Fayyuum encaustic portraits. By interweaving the artist’s mark making with the natural materials making their mark as they will I was also playing on the theme of nature vs artifice. For me the best synthesis is of the human with the natural.
Mixed Media Encaustic Collages
Birth Mother: graphite poem on tissue, encaustic medium, oils on paper
Symphony Vegitas: encaustic, plant material, papers, oil, on cardboard
Afternoon Reverie: collaged papers, encaustic medium, oils on paper
Heart of Wax: collaged paper, colored paraffin wax on paper
Untitled: plant, encaustic, pastel on cardboard
Wax Reliefs with Natural Elements
This group of work represents the beginning phase of my experimentation without encaustic. Using melted paraffin wax of primary colors, I created a series of relief paintings using the naturally foraged materials from the grounds of the Rainbow Valley complex. While not encaustic per se, they use wax as the binder for the many elements, some including insect specimens. The intent was to use the natural world as the medium for artistic creativity as many indigenous native tribal peoples have done for millennia.
