So, what the heck is encaustic? 

The word comes from the ancient Greeks and means ‘to burn in’ and refers to each layer having to be fused.  This is how they used to paint before the advent of suspending pigments in oil to create oil paints. 

Damar resin (from trees in Indonesia) is added to beeswax to create encaustic medium. 

Photo Encaustic is combining photographs with encaustic medium, pigments, texture, and a whole lot of playfulness. 

We work with a heated palette to keep our medium and colored beeswax hot in order to paint.

Photographs can be incorporated into the process in 3 ways:

  > mount and image to a substrate and add layers and layers of wax + pigments
  > build up layers of wax and embed a print on tissue paper or other very fine paper
  > transfer the inks from an image onto layers of wax

Each process of incorporating a photograph uses different techniques; each allowing the beeswax to penetrate your photograph and letting the light through your piece and drawing viewers towards your image. 

Simply magical.