Artist's Statement

About the Medium:

As an artist, I communicate best not with words but with visuals, the medium only a beginning, and a tool to be used for the exploration. I define and redefine images, spiraling past points where I have been. An encounter with an old image may touch a new awareness, a new thought out of which develops new images to pursue.

The figures may be here, there, or somewhere in between, lost, or just lost in thought, alone or together in ways we may not see. Landscapes of the soul bound to landscapes of the earth, the air, the light.

Painting with encaustic was like returning home for me. The last two years of painting and drawing, I have been intrigued with transparent layers, wax melted onto monotypes, and working on frosted films that overlap. Years of batik, painting with color in the wax, made it an easy transition to encaustic. This beeswax-based paint is applied molten to an under painted surface of linen that has been stretched on a wood panel and sized with hot rabbit skin glue. Layers of colored wax are built up, and then fused with a hot air gun. Different colors will melt at different rates because of the varying chemical compositions of the pigments and the greater absorption of heat by darker colors. The layers can be used transparent or very opaque, scraped, incised and impregnated with objects, papers or other materials.

The durability of encaustic is due to the fact that beeswax is impervious to moisture, does not yellow and darken with age and with the inclusion of dammar resin in the formula increases the hardening of the wax over time. As with all works of art the paintings should not be hung in the sun or kept at very cold temperatures. A simple buffing with a soft cloth and a spritz of water will remove any haze that may appear, especially in the first few months when the surface is hardening and curing.

Note: The series Kunzi are especially poetic and meaningful as they are translated from Tibetan to mean.... the emptiness of everything."

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Link to an article about Catherine's Studio in Western Art and Artchecture

Video: Catherine talking about her work at Pratt Fine Art Center, Auction, May 2016

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Paintings by Catherine Eaton Skinner • All Paintings • All Artists