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“Start with a blank surface. It doesn’t have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. … You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I’ve come to believe.”
When I was 12 years old, I became aware of the mythology of Atlantis, the Lost City, deeply submerged somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. So Plato, or someone said. As a child actor and dancer, I was immersed in the realm of imagination; whatever it conjured. I dreamt of Atlantis, I wrote stories about the mystery and magic of the Lost City, and visualized its spires, its advanced-yet-agrarian society. The Utopia. The concept of Atlantis has remained with me through these many years. And, I confess to you now that I still enter its world — imagined, mythological, or possibly even real. It has taken several sojourns for me to find the art form in which I could best express the personal, inward journeys to this spiritual home within. During these past ten years, I have experimented with the sensual and luminous qualities of encaustic painting. Like Atlantis, encaustic painting is ancient; an old, old form of oil painting with beeswax and oil pigments merged together with heat — probably over a bed of coals a few thousand years ago. My encaustic paintings have historically been small, easy to hold, and something to be comfortably hung in a space needing punctuation. So, when Patrick Milbourn of the M Gallery asked me to join him in this exhibit with all new and larger work, I was reluctant. After my dubious conversation with Patrick, I entered my studio. On one of my easels was a blank maple board made for me more than two years ago. I am an abstract expressionist so there is no representational or figurative work to dictate palette requirements. Yet, I selected a palette quickly as if I knew exactly what I wanted. There they were: Indian yellow, Naples yellow, alizarin orange, bronze, silver, gold, sap green, and a touch, just a touch, of white.
The Blank Board soon became layered with gently applied wax paints of many colors such as Joseph’s Coat must have been. Fusing each thin layer with my ever-ready heat gun (the handle of which is coated with its own history of wax from many years’ use), I then carved into the wax layers with blades and sculpting tools for relief, fused again, and finally applied wax to a cold board to create texture. After several hours, I thought I had finished my first painting and had no sense of Atlantis — or so I believed. The following day I walked with anticipation into my studio. The wax would have hardened and I could begin buffing the cold wax to a high, luminous sheen. When I saw the painting on the easel, I knew in less than a brief half second that it was incomplete. I heard no song, no music in the piece. I took it off the easel to my worktable and without forethought I reached for a small vile of citrine crystals. The crystals too had been with me a long, long time. I gently heated the areas of the painting that seemed to cry out "put us here and now there"! Ever so carefully, I fused again the encrustation of the tenderly placed crystals. I looked at the work and it finally gave voice to the music of the spheres — the harmonious alchemy of the wax, oil paint, pastels, and crystals bestowed upon the painting an ‘other worldly’ presence and, yes, for me it communicated some of the mystery of Atlantis. Eight more paintings were completed, and more are ready to be birthed, since that day a few months ago when Patrick called me. You see the act of painting was not enough. Not this time. For surely the Atlanteans would have been surrounded by the healing powers and energies of their Crystal City. Of this, I am certain. These paintings of my “Atlantean Journeys” can be viewed up close or at a distance. Personally, I prefer walking right up to them and interacting with the energies generated from the magic, mystery, and music of the Lost City.
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Studio at 54 Fyke Road |
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