I need creative expression to thrive, whether I am painting or just photographing life around me.  I see beauty everywhere. Just stop for a moment and look.

I express myself creatively through encaustic painting. Encaustic is beeswax and damar tree resin, mixed with dry earth or oil pigments, and can be used in combination with other media to produce an infinite variety of images. Sculpting the wax by building up and scraping back up to 10-20  layers of wax in a single painting can be mesmerizing.
 
I love the meditative process of fusing layers of wax together, using the blow torch as my paintbrush. The layers of translucent wax allow me to create a mysterious depth. The experience of applying encaustic medium provides just as much pleasure as the images it enables me to create.

Painting with encaustic wax is a powerful metaphor for living life. There is no controlling encaustic. Each time I heat up my pallet, lay down and fuse the wax with an image in mind, I must prepare for the wax to do something I do not expect.  I must surrender to that uncertainty, have the courage to embrace it, and create something meaningful based on this new circumstance.

Such is life.