Payback for days when your paintings paint themselves…..days when you are frustrated. This happens now and then, especially when I am mixing it up in the studio between mediums.

I’ve been heating up the encaustic wax but also finishing up and varnishing some acrylic paintings.In fact, I still have one large acrylic painting that I just keep looking at like it might finish up on it’s own…. yeah, I know…but all of a sudden I will just go for it and paint it all out or something will occur to me that I want to try on it.

But, back to the encaustic. I scraped off the wax from two previous paintings that were never finished since now the inspiration for finishing them is gone. When I haven’t been working with a medium for a time, I feel awkward with working with it for a time. That is the way my day has gone with this work. AND on top of that this is an extreme rectangle that is never my best format.

I had no real thought in mind but I have been mulling over the thoughts of all my paintings actually having a long story in layers beneath the surface. Especially with encaustic, you build layers even more than you do with other mediums. The painting experience can be quick or slow and contemplative. One thing that happens to me is that it is usually contemplative since time is taken to heat up the wax and get sufficient paint out and heated, etc. Once I get a lot of paint down on the panel, then I can start thinking, feeling, and seeing what my imagination or memory directs. Then it doesn’t matter how many layers are added or subtracted, the painting tells me where to go.

Most times, my paintings go toward natural forms but not in the way they really look when you see them but the way I feel the place or environment. I like this since we all have different ways of feeling toward our surroundings and our response will be different.

This painting is like many………..I just felt my way along. I don’t know that it is finished as I will need to come re-visit it in the studio, look and decide then whether or not to keep adding more layers.

 

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