Primary Colors

A few weeks ago Treena Flannery Ericson called, and with many apologies for asking, asked if I would donate a painting for a fund raising auction. It seemed like the perfect way to nudge myself back into painting. I adore Treena.  She's the gallery director at the Scarab Club in Detroit, and the Scarab Club has been good to me. The first juried show I was ever in was at the Scarab Club in the early 70's. 

The Scarab Club was founded in 1907 by a group of artists and art lovers. The main gallery is a bright, big space. Perfect for enhancing art. http://www.scarabclub.org/

The fund raiser is called Primary Colors and they wanted art that was confined to the basic primaries, plus black and white. After some messing around with acrylics, and I do mean messing, I decided to do a tryptic in encaustic. 

It's been 85 to 90 degrees here and humid as hell. I'm naturally assuming hell is humid. So I get out my blow torch, electric griddle, and electric frying pan. I figured I was already very hot, so a few more degrees wouldn't kill me. It didn't. In fact, encaustic is a great medium to do in the heat. If your sweaty brow drips on the art it just evaporates. Picture what can happen to a watercolor.

So I'm painting… fusing layers and layers of pigmented wax and damar varnish. Carving into the layers and fusing some more. 

Thank you, Treena.

If you are unfamiliar with encaustic, I'll tell more in a future blog.