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Glaciers
beeswax, resin, pigment
4’h x 4’w x 2″d
by Lynda Cole
Lynda Cole’s encaustic paintings are just up at WSG gallery! Her work has always pulled me in with its seductive, tactile surfaces. And I’m not the only one…..often, I catch visitors to the gallery fighting the urge to touch the large, thick, waxy surfaces!
Her meditative compositions, along with colors curated from nature allow us, as viewers, to travel into our imaginations…..to a different place each time we look at the work.
I had the opportunity to interview her recently about the work in this show. The interview follows.
1. How did you first learn about encaustic painting – what drew you to it?
I was enchanted by the realistic encaustic work of a teacher who became a friend – Chris McCauley. She taught a class about painting with encaustic and I studied with her. This was back before 2004.
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Jan Mayen
beeswax, resin, pigment
3’h x 4’w x 2″d
2. What made you think: “I need to learn how to use this medium!”?
Once I used it a little bit, it became very seductive. I love the depth one can build up with translucent/transparent layers. A viewer can look into, as well as at encaustic painting just because of the medium. Also, with beginning encaustic painting there are many happy accidents. It’s a hard medium to master, to make it do what you want, but it’s easy to come up with very appealing beginning efforts. Then there was the normal painting feedback I received from combining colors, solving compositional problems, working with line and mass but additionally, moving paint around with a torch as well as a brush had a certain initial appeal.
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Clouds and Mystery
beeswax, resin, pigment
4’h x 6’w x 2″d
3. Where did you learn to use encaustic and what has been the most unexpected thing (s) about using this medium?
One of the interesting things that I have learned over time, and am still learning, is the chemical reaction of one color pigment to another. So for instance, when I paint an area with Titanium white (which I do often) and fuse it with a torch, I know there may be possibilities for beautiful spontaneous patterns depending on what pigment I use next. If I paint the next layer using a pigment, like a cobalt that is pretty heavy, then torch the surface with gentle torching, I can get a cobalt-colored surface with no mixing of the two layers. Or if I let the torch linger a bit over an area so that it melts the cobalt and the Titanium white, some of the white will dance up to the surface and some of the cobalt will sink. This process is almost always a pleasant surprise. Not all pigments interact this way.
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North
beeswax, resin, pigment
3’h x 4’w x 2″d
4. Please tell us about the blues in these pieces. Blue isn’t a color I’ve seen much in your work.
The blues come from the colors in the old ice and the water in which the ice is floating. In the Arctic the old ice is often as blue as the bottom of a swimming pool. It is very captivating to see this color in its natural habitat.
5. How did you come to be an abstract painter?
If I’m going to look at a painting for awhile I don’t want it to have a story there already for me. I want to be able to make up my own story – or rather than a story at all, I’d like the painting set a mood for me. That’s not to say that representational painting can’t set a mood – it certainly can. But I’d rather look for my mood/story in the aspects of the painting itself – composition, color combinations, line/mass, opaque/transparent. I’d have the painting create a feeling rather than tell a tale. I find that’s easier to do with abstraction.
6. What other areas of your life or personal practices influence your work?
Oh, many things influence my work – the places I go for one. This particular show, “North”, comes from the time in June/July 2015 I spent in the Arctic area. Although there was actually the normal, whole color palette present, what I noticed was white/black of snow on land and the aqua blue of the old ice. But I don’t really have to travel to foreign parts to find inspiration. The lines of trees in Michigan winters speak volumes to me as does that beautiful, icy pink we get in our skies during some winter sunsets. I always watch for evenings with that color present. Any water, even puddles, pull me in. I don’t get much inspiration from the stories of people – mainly I get inspiration from nature. Perhaps that is part of the reason I like to paint abstractly, sans story.
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