Over the weekend I took an encaustic art class. It was my first time playing with wax, a heat gun, and my desire to deep dive into this art medium. I have been interested for years, follow a few local artists, and finally took the plunge to dabble in something that has inspired me for quite some time. I learned a lot, have even more of a desire to purchase my own supplies and whittle away the hours in my own little creative world.

You may remember a post from almost a year ago on the encaustic piece that Chris and I purchased at the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts. It is the second piece we have hanging from local encaustic artist Karl Kaiser. I love the modern look of his work, the clean, smooth look of the wax resin, and I have to say after spending 2.5 hours playing with this art medium, what he does takes incredible patience. Here are the two pieces I semi completed during the class. You should feel honored and lucky that I am sharing my unfinished artwork.

As soon as I have a spare moment (life has been busy what can I say), I am going to do some research to find out what it will cost me to purchase a heat gun, pancake griddle, metal warming pots, resin, wax, medium, encaustic paint, boards, etc. While it sounds like a lot, I think I can do it fairly inexpensively to start with to ensure that it really is something I want to do long-term. As I write this I have visions for different paintings I would like to try, and I can see it begin to become a bit of an addiction. I can only imagine that there are things to do at home, the house is interestingly quiet, and Chris tracks me down knowing that he’ll find me in the studio (aka baby room, aka dog room, if only we could decide), wasting a Saturday away playing with wax. Is that really so bad? There have to be worse addictions. There was something soothing about manipulating the wax and in some ways having no control over it.

I asked the instructor if I could play with hardware washers. I ended up only having the time to put one into my piece, but I can see where I would like to explore metal and wax, sort of a juxtaposition on organic and industrial in one piece. I think I am already addicted.

Chris are you ready for our shopping trip to the art, hardware stores and oh your favorite: Michaels?