Painting With Wax

Painting with wax is magic.  I use photos and drawings and I paint with liquid wax over them.  I also use oils, oil sticks, engraving, and transfers of my photos.  Encaustics allow me to work on old paintings which is really fun.  I love the smell of wax, although it does require proper ventilation as it tends to trigger headaches and other harmful effects.  I like making my own paints from wax, dammar resin and dry pigments.  I love to see how the solid bloc melts and hardens in front of your eyes in seconds! 

This painting is part of a group of trees I photographed last winter.  The surface has drawings of trees that mingle and combine with the background photos.  Wax makes the images look alive, like a pulsating cell. Some of these paintings were shown at The New Art Festival, Ottawa, 2012.

Night Cell

Musical Agriculture

Tiller

This sculpture is part of my exhibition this week.  It is one of five objects I made some time ago, built with pieces of a dismantled piano.  When I look at these pieces they seem to make music and move in jerky movements, just like old agricultural mechanisms.  They take me back to Tinguely's toys.  Unlike Tinguely's my sculptures can't make sounds or squirt water but they offer the same kind of playfulness. My pieces honour old agriculture inventions, and they serve the purpose of tilling ideas.  Since they come from pieces of an old piano, they can still make music, which adds power when cultivating in my head.