Happy New Year!

Happy New Year and welcome to my blog. For those of you who don't know me, I'm an artist, an artist who works with wax and who collects. I collect rusted metal, bottle caps, sticks, bones, feathers, rocks. I like finding these little treasures and bringing them to my studio. The collecting is a ritual, a practice, something that is intrinsic to my nature. They remind me of a journey, a life’s journey, the history, the passage, and the end of it. The surprise of finding these objects engages my imagination and inspires me to create.

These objects are also discarded, thrown away without value. They are weathered, worn, and
aged. They show the passage of time in their appearance – the whitened smoothness of bone, the discolored and torn borders of cardboard, the subtle color changes of browns, rusts, and yellows with the broken and bent edges of metal. They speak the language of what once was; they speak the language of time passed. It is through this language that I give value to these objects. I engage them through my art while my art transforms them (hopefully!) into objects of beauty.

The work I create is with encaustic pigments (pigmented bees wax with damar resin). I am fascinated with the way the wax melts, moves, and submerges with itself as the heat is applied. I love how the wax sinks into the layers and the illuminosity of it. I can't get the results with any other medium. I find the combination of the natural wax and the man made rusted metal significant to our modern existance. Making art is something that I not only love to do but is something that I must do. It is a sacred act for me, like a prayer or devotion.

Well, that's it for now. Take care, enjoy, and God bless!