Forest Light

I just completed this piece, which had reached several earlier points at which it seemed complete. While there were aspects of the earlier versions that I was quite pleased with, something kept calling me back. A kind of restless feeling of non-resolution, a sense that the work was not yet mysterious enough to me. So, I returned, I scraped back, I built up new layers of wax. I nearly submerged the work in darkness – layers of dark encaustic and dark oils with beeswax – and then began to excavate to allow the underlying lightness to shine through.

Some paintings just need time to ripen to the point at which they feel true. And they demand that you risk destroying work that may actually be good…