ENCAUSTIC

Jane’s current encaustic work combines an ancient painting medium, encaustic wax, with digital and traditional photography.  Her most recent photographic imagery is captured digitally, which includes digital pinhole images created using handmade lenses. Current projects frequently build upon her past works:  Polaroid Transfers, cyanotypes, and black & white photographs.  This older imagery is worked within the wax.

To create her encaustic work, Jane applies many layers of molten wax, fusing each layer with a heat gun. The core of this visceral and physical conversation centers on adding and subtracting beeswax. She uses dental tools as well as a hot stylus to unearth the image below the wax. She will also imbed, transfer or burnish images into the layers of the beeswax.

With encaustics, multiple elements of luminosity can be achieved, allowing the photograph to reveal itself.  This work often presents a veil of an unknown light source.  The completed work is three-dimensional, having developed from its two-dimensional origin.  This process affords Jane a new way to work with light.  She is painting with an ancient medium and composing with digital photography.