Something's Starting To Shift

Detail

Great Minds Think Alike
Encaustic
13x15

I had a weekend full of art - but the kind of art that involves talking about it, hanging out with like-minded people, hearing lectures about it, shopping for the tools to do it... and feeling a sense over several weeks now (years, really) that I don't know what I'm doing and that I will never find my oeurve.

Hearing Tony Scherman speak at IEA starting something shifting in me. I'm still not sure what, but I did come home from the conference feeling like I could sit with encaustic again. I had such a great experience in the first workshop I took with Eileen Goldenberg a couple of years ago. She's such a fun and inspiring instructor and she makes you MOVE! Then, I came home and couldn't replicate any of it. My work was gloppy and uninspiring. It looked like a kindergartner had been let loose with modeling clay of the worst kind.

I went to the IEA conference last year and got reinspired and came home and tried it again - another run at the elusive mistress that is wax. Some success, but it was not sustainable. I know - you are thinking "to get good at something, really master it takes Practice, Practice, Practice." And that is true and I have not been putting in the time, but still expect results.

So again, reinspired by this year's IEA and a visit to Daniella Woolf's open studio wherein I saw a brief but wonderful demonstration of her doing encaustic that is more the type of encaustic I would like to be doing - mixed media collaging. I came home and made these two pieces.

Great Minds Think Alike
Encaustic
13x15

Decouverte Lecon XLV
Monotype and Encaustic on Rives BFK Paper
Paper Dim 22x30
Plate Dim 11x17

I'm feeling more competence. And that is good.

I also saw a ribbon on my piece (triptych) through the window of the closed gallery at Pacific Art League. That didn't hurt. I think I won something....