This is one of my many kayak adventures last summer and it now being winter, what better way to spend my time, than reliving something so beautiful. For you today, I don't want to spend my time talking about this rowing event. Rather, I'd like to talk about the event of painting.
When I was a wee tadpole, looking at Renaissance paintings in the Bible, I thought, what magic is this? Dots and strokes to make images. When I was older in school, I learned about atoms and what we think is solid, is actually a collection of such particles holding together.
This painting is nothing more than that and an illusion. Art scholars may call it impressionism or mayhaps have another word for it. Ultimately, this is just dots, dashes, scraps and melts. I started somewhere and stopped somewhere else, when it felt right to do so.
Oh dear, pictures just don't do it justice and it misses all the finite awesomeness of encaustic. I have to keep saying that because I groan to see this in photo form on the internet. Encaustic is a tactile medium and when peeps see it in person, it tends to stop them in their tracks to lean in further. Some areas are smooth like glass and some are all molten and troubled up into something beautiful.
Below are detail shots and of different techniques I learned while doing this.
Perception, perception, perception. In working on this one, I was looking for depth and I needed to do this with colour and technique.
In the trees there is slight texture, however on the main log is just a light light light melt and pure feeling. Just an illusion on a flat surface called canvas.
The mountains was incredibly cumbersome in many layers to bring them forward and then push them back in a mist.
The water..... that was a entire something else to think through....
I ground my teeth, gave up and went back at it and glad to have experienced it all. In all of it, these elements are apart and connected. The reflection of the trees on the water are not arbitrary but have meaning from the light above.
As I create this magic illusion of strokes and dots onto a flat surface, I am contemplative of life and love itself as we all move through our daily existence.
Blessings and peace in your journeys.
Angela Tahara
