The red piece, highWIRED, steel + copperwire & oil + encaustic    72” x 48”

and blue piece , aguazul, steel + copperwire & oil + encaustic   23” x 46”

First a short introduction to encaustic:  The material/process has been around since the Egyptians painted on their sarcophagi. When I was in Egypt several years ago, one of my main interests was to see this wax surface firsthand.  There it was….fresh as the day it was painted.  Wax is a very stable medium.  When pigment is added to the wax, it fuses together and voila….a very permanent and stable surface.  That is unless it is gouged, melted, or otherwise mishandled.

Think of encaustic as something like our contemporary crayons…. brightly colored, transferable to another surface, and luminous.  However, if handled poorly it can be scratched, roughed up, and melted.  This brings us back to FIRE, and the question…”will it melt?”  Yes, it will melt.  That is exactly how I work my multilayered paintings*.  The molten wax is applied to the substrate and manipulated (gouged, scratched, scumbled, fused) until the painting is declared done!  However, it will NOT melt under normal circumstances.  Normal meaning inside our homes in an environment hospitable to people.  If an encaustic painting is hanging on the wall, and is melting…there are much larger issues to worry about, such as the house being on fire!  Even with the sun coming through a window, for those short hours, nothing will happen.  If left on the patio in the desert sun, yes, the surface will get very soft, but still would not roll off the canvas.  That takes about 150 degrees of heat.  All that said, it is not advisable to put ANY painted or multi-media work in an area where it gets direct sunlight. Pigments can be fugitive…..that means it can fade. This is why museums are not exposed to daylight coming through windows.  The best protection for your valuable investment in art is to avoid direct sunlight, and if you find it is melting, time to call the fire department!

* for a visual on the molten wax process, click on my video at the top of the page.

This is the third year that I have participated.  Last year my work was selected second…quite an honor.  The piece I created this year has very special significance for me.  The nature film community lost a very special friend in January. Mike DeGruy was killed in a helicopter accident while filming for James Cameron in Australia.  Mike had a special love of the mysterious octopus.  He delighted in his lectures of educating us about these crazy creatures.  At his memorial we all sang Octopus Garden from the Beatles Abbey Road album.  My piece was created in memory of Mike and is titled OctopusGARDEN.  Here it is:

Ricardo Legorreta passed away on my birthday December 30th.  In my amateur passion for architecture, he was a hero.  I loved his bold use of color (he was, after all, a student of Luis Barragan), large flat expanses of color, unexpected textures, and above all, simplicity of design.  A few years ago I did a large triptych.  There were two large red encaustic paintings supporting a copper panel.  The inspiration for this work was a building by Legoretta.  I don’t remember the exact building, and that doesn’t matter, as all inspirations are simply a jumping off point to explore, but I do remember the joy in watching his work over the years and going on to create “sol a sol” as a nod to my appreciation of his filtering out the excess and honing his designs down to a zen-like strength.  I tend to see signs and omens in events, and while his life and work continues to be celebrated….I hope the spark of his life was part of the candle on my birthday cake.

For images of his dramatic buildings: http://legorretalegorreta.com/

The four new copper constructions with encaustic paintings are installed in the Executive Board Room of the New Cottage Hospital.  These four non-objective pieces are the result of a collaboration between the talent of Aesthetics Inc. in San Diego, the project architects, a very savvy Board of Directors of Cottage Health Systems, a great installer, and numerous behind-the-scene cheerleaders.  Thank you ALL!  During the first week in January there will be an open house to showcase all the new art in the hospital.  Several Santa Barbara Artists are featured in the public spaces.  I hope you can come and enjoy the beautiful new hospital facility and celebrate.  Meanwhile I offer this quick snapshot of the West Wall.  You MUST come to the party to see the East Wall!

http://www.sbch.org/Portals/1/Skins/CottageHealth/html/HealingArts/HealingArts-Venable.html

To view the creation of this work, watch the documentary, INVENTING SHADOWS

 “A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something”     Frank Capra

I have been a film buff as long as I can remember. Sometimes getting lost in the story, seeing how the music moves the story forward, or just watching the production design.  I love this old quote from film director Frank Capra.  Often we downplay our intuitiveness or instinct…but if the path is followed…something great could happen.  A hunch is our sixth sense telling us to pay attention!  In art, we coax our intuition to guide the concepts in to a form we haven’t envisioned before.  It is always a leap of faith to allow new concepts to seep in to our work.  The above image is one from 1998.  It was purchased on behalf of David Fincher for his film FIGHT CLUB.  I thought you would like to see Fincher’s hunch at work…. selecting “edgy” art for the wall of Edward Norton’s office…a clue to the “edgy” personality that would emerge in the course of the film.