Jim Waters

Painting

Buzzard Rock Studio
311 Murphy Branch Rd
Burnsville, NC 28714

www.jimwatersencaustics.com

PO Box 813
Micaville, NC 28755
828-765-5868
j4waters@gmail.com

Artist Statement: I have been working in Encaustics for the last couple years, having come to the medium through oil painting and printmaking.

Encaustic is an ancient process used by the Greeks over two centuries ago, whereby bee's wax is mixed with pigment and Damar crystal, a resin harvested from evergreen trees found in Ceylon. Heating this mixture produces a hard and intensely colored wax which when melted, can be used as paint. The wax can be built up in layers and sculpted. It can also be incised to reveal the layers of color below or fused with a heat source to blend colors.

I immediately became seduced by the luminous and tactile qualities of the wax that reveal the underlying or hidden beauty of colors and forms. I set up a painting with many layers of colored wax, and then selectively remove areas to essentially paint by subtracting and incising to reveal what lies beneath the layers. Metaphorically, my work is about what lies beneath the surface of our human emotions and our natural world. Cutting away the wax turns a two-dimensional painting into a three-dimensional sculpture and illuminates the changes that can occur when the hidden is revealed.