Embracing Passionate Color

Painting reveals my inner state better than any analyst could. Think how much I have saved on therapy over the years by allowing color to signal my interior emotional state and alert me to what is happening in my life.

This is not something that I really notice right away unless I just drown myself in it, but this past year or so it's really been apparent to me. I've been through a black and brown phase when I was so depressed about my mother's condition, I emerged into a blue and green period when the stress and anxiety were lifting and then I found myself in a dark red and orange state when I began to feel much better about life in general. Apparently I'm back to being even lighter and brighter than I thought I was because I can't get enough of pink and red. Wow! The Little Woman and I have been together nearly 25 years so it's not a new love affair, but to judge by my palette, it's spring and I am passionately embracing the whole wide world.

Actually I'm embracing a new method of working in the studio. I have slowly begun using the old books and papers I've been collecting and begun collaging them in various ways with encaustic and other materials. This process began with the rubber and copper I started using a year ago and now it's morphed into books. I've previously shown in this blog the book pieces that will be included in Wax Libris II, the library show that Joanne Mattera has curated for this year's encaustic conference in June. (Note that those pieces were pink and red!) Now here are a few more recent pieces.

Still untitled, 12" x 12", encaustic over paper collage

Bumpy Red Ride, 12" x 12", encaustic and mixed media

The second piece does not include books but has my standard things embedded plus some larger, cruder hunks of wax and a lot of red/pink colors. The pink blur in the center is a color called Opal Rose that is transparent and iridescent - very pretty. The reason that I include this piece in this post is that I thought I might make a diptych from these two.

Here's the diptych. I think the dots bring it together, but we'll see.

And here are the first pieces with book collage I made:

Library I, encaustic over collaged parts of books. I think it's about 32"H x 18"W or something like that. This is still pretty dark.

Library II, encaustic over collage parts of books, same size. You can see the red and pink creeping in there even though there's a lot of blue.


I am getting a kick out of working with these materials because they're so rich all on their own. I've been struggling to discover how I can make them my own, and now I think I'm working my way into it.

This week I also made a few collages on cut off book covers, thinking about the small works show later this month in Fairfield, CT. They were fun to do. Here's one of them.

Untitled in red, pink and black, about 9" x 6" or something like that, encaustic over collage.

It always surprises me how much my emotional state is affected by what happens in the studio. When I have a good day, I'm just exhilarated and when it goes badly or doesn't go at all, I am in despair. It's the life of an artist.

New Work - Deconstructed Books

A few years ago when we lived in Ashfield, Mass. (one of the hilltowns of Franklin County in western Massachusetts), we helped our neighbors in the Spruce Corner area of Ashfield clean up and paint an old one-room schoolhouse. It had been unused as a schoolhouse for many years, but at one time had been a neighborhood meeting room for various functions. We came across a stash of old, dirty, mildewed books published between 1915 and 1945 or so that had been left there in an unused part of the building (the privy). We were about to throw them out when my partner Bonnie insisted that we save them and take them home. (She does this with animals, too.)

The books have been traveling with me from studio to studio, and I look at them every now and then, always meaning to use them in my work since they are so evocative of a different era. They are mostly novels and stories suitable for children or young adults. What attracts me to them is not really their content, but their physical appearance.

"Dancers in Mourning", deconstructed book mounted on panel with encaustic, rubber, tacks, pigment stick, 16"H x 12"W. (The title of the piece is the title of the book.)

I have been thinking about the disappearance of memory and the parallels between books without content and people without memory. What are we without our memories? Both people and books have a resonance from their previous life and a certain beauty that reflects the passage of time. I guess this wearing away by time relates to the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi where "an object or expression can bring about, within us, a sense of serene melancholy and a spiritual longing." (Juniper, Andrew (2003). Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence. Tuttle Publishing, quoted on Wikipedia).

The Clue of the Eyelash,  deconstructed book mounted on panel with encaustic, rubber, tacks, pigment stick, 16"H x 12"W.

This is not to minimize the really disastrous impact of memory loss on an individual that leads to the dissolution of a person's mind. I'm choosing to focus on the part of a person that is left when memory starts to go. There is a certain peace that arrives with loss of detail and a lessening importance of those things which preoccupy us so much, mostly relating to time and relationships. In wabi-sabi "nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect" (Powell, Richard R. (2004). Wabi Sabi Simple. Adams Media quoted on Wikipedia).

Boys of Liberty, deconstructed book mounted on panel with encaustic, rubber, tacks, pigment stick, 16"H x 12"W.

So these pieces are made in the spirit of wabi-sabi in recognition of their imperfection, impermanence and changed nature.

As a former English major, I was reminded of my favorite Wordsworth poem, where he describes the sense of serene melancholy and spiritual longing of wabi-sabi.

And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
      With many recognitions dim and faint,
      And somewhat of a sad perplexity,                               
      The picture of the mind revives again:
      While here I stand, not only with the sense
      Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
      That in this moment there is life and food
      For future years. And so I dare to hope,
      Though changed, no doubt, from what I was...

William Wordsworth

Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, 1798