Back in 2001, I took a month-long artist’s retreat deep in the woods of British Columbia living in a tent on a mountainside with no electricity or running water. I intended to focus on photography which had been a passion of mine for at least a decade, but my camera broke on the first day there. What to do? ... I purchased some acrylics from the on-site “store” (a woodshed stocked with art supplies) and spent my days in this primitive paradise painting on found wood. I haven’t stopped since.

While I now favor oils over acrylics, my medium of choice is encaustic, which allows for endless possibilities in creating layered, textured, mixed media pieces. I love the element of serendipity inherent in the never-exactly-sure-what-you’re-going-to-get fusing process integral to this technique, where the paint is melted pigmented wax. For the past two years, I have also been experimenting with cold wax, which creates a creamy vehicle for oil paint. I apply/remove it almost exclusively with squeegees, as that often leads to unexpected, ethereal fields of color.

I call this series “found landscapes” because each one is the result of additive and subtractive meanderings in an open-ended search for place. These paintings were very much process-driven, with color and materials at the forefront. While every piece began with a chosen palette, they inevitably evolved into something entirely different, which was exciting; like driving without a map.

Working on the encaustic (hot wax) paintings was more like an archaeological dig, where razor blades and pottery tools scraped away surface layers searching for bits of history to enrich the story of place where we finally find ourselves.

With the oil and cold wax pieces, paint was both added and taken away with rubber scrapers, in a more delicate way, creating thin layers of both transparency and opacity, again searching for a coveted vista.

The collection as a whole can be seen as a road trip taken with no particular place I had to be, welcoming surprises around every bend, these images like snapshots to remind me of my journey.