Living many decades in Texas, I developed a special bond with the grandeur of its diverse and complex landscape from the Gulf Coast through the Piney Woods of East Texas across the deserts to the mountains which form the gateway to the great Southwest.
The work that follows gained new meaning after a recent visit to Southeast Asia especially to Cambodia and Malaysia where archeological excavations exposed artifacts of ancient peoples among stone carvings and monumental temples. This journey enabled me to see the lands of the Southwest as new territory both exhilarating and dramatic.
Most of the materials used in these works are oil and cold wax and hot wax known as encaustic. Working on panels with layers of oil and cold wax, I scratch and scrape the painted surfaces to expose underlying layers leaving their marks for the viewer to perceive. I love the colors of the iron reds, fiery oranges, glowing golds, luminous ambers and brilliant blues of the landscape attended by the shadowy grays and browns found in stone crevices, canyons and parched gorges.
Often, I juxtapose panels of encaustic alongside the oil and cold wax panels to create a dynamic visual and textural tension between the organic molten fluidity of hot wax with its sheen and transparency and the matte translucent qualities of oil and cold wax. I am attracted to the physical qualities of the hot wax as it coagulates to react with previous and subsequent layers sometimes creating blooms that explode with color. Contrasting encaustic medium with the matte qualities and rich dense texture of oil and cold wax create for me a strong effect when these two materials are combined in a single image.
I value the myths and symbols of past remains and the ruggedly magnificent lands of the Southwest for they provide insight, inspiration and motivation for my paintings in the present and into the future. |
