Recycling Encaustic Paintings

Reworking encaustic paintings is pretty simple because you can just use some heat and scrape off whatever you don't want - either a layer or two or the whole thing, but yesterday's post about reworking acrylic paintings got me thinking about another way of recycling paintings - combining an older painting with newly-painted partners to make a diptych or triptych.

So here's an encaustic painting I made in 2007. I called it "Trinity" and it's 12"x12". I never showed it anywhere because the color pallette is really different from the one I normally use. This painting primarily uses three lovely Evans Encaustic colors: "Joanne Loves This Red" - a rich, dark orangey red, "Duochrome Blue Green" - a fabulous color that breaks to a bronzy sheen when painted over black, and "Cloisonne Pink" - a dense, reddish pink. It also has some drawing in black, a little streaky white, embedded plant parts and black oilstick.

I liked this painting because of the strange placement of the three components, the kinda weird color combination and the way some of the colors broke when painted over what was underneath. What to do with it? I could paint more in this pallette, let it kick around the studio as a singleton, sell it to someone who was on the same strange wavelength - or paint some companions to go with it.

Here's what it became: I chose to turn it around and paint two other panels to combine with it, making it a triptych that I called "Red, Black and Bumpy," 36"H x 12"W. Turning "Trinity" sideways caused the central image to look like an eye (maybe an eye wearing a cute little hat) and that made it a little mysterious. I like the way the more geometric elements in the two panels below play off the original, more organic panel. But don't think that this solved the problem because now I have the triptych as an oddball! Guess I'll just have to paint more to go with.