Encaustic Painting

Encaus­tic paint­ing is an ancient tech­nique com­mon­ly used by the Egyp­tians, Greeks, and Romans, in which coloured pig­ments were mixed with molten wax and paint­ed on pan­els. In this course stu­dents will learn how to apply the encaus­tic tech­nique to con­tem­po­rary paint­ings. This medi­um con­sists of a mix­ture of beeswax and resin to which pig­ments are added to cre­ate paint. The wax­es can be reworked or removed, added to or abrad­ed. This tech­nique will give the paint­ings either a great lumi­nos­i­ty through the appli­ca­tion of a num­ber of trans­par­ent lay­ers or a thick, mat­te tex­ture. This tech­nique will become a spring­board in the stu­dents’ self-explo­ration of abstract and/​or rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al art. The cre­ativ­i­ty of this medi­um is unending.