Salsa Garden | 6″ x 6″| encaustic + oil pastel | 2009 | $150

Last month, I met Karon Leigh from Tucson, AZ. Karon found my work on Lisa Sisley-Blinn’s Encaustic Artists on Twitter gallery. She connected to me on Facebook and came to my studio in Portland on her way to showing her encaustic paintings at Local Color in Seattle where I held a show in 2006. Talk about synchronicities!

In the brief hour that Karon was here she shared a wealth of information with me! Like, how I need to join IEA because Linda Womack heads the local chapter…which I did and was really funny because I had just helped Linda hang her show at Arabella for May/June. Karon also showed me some of her paintings and I was really taken with how titanium white oil paint under clear encaustic medium acts like a crackle paint. It was great how she wrapped her paintings in sign backing paper to keep them from sticking and finally encased them in water heater insulation to keep them from melting during her drive.

She also told me how to use oil pastels with encaustics. Which is how Salsa Garden came to be. I thoroughly enjoyed mixing the oil pastels with the encaustics because I do love drawing. I used a mini blow torch to set the oil paints into the encaustic. Last week, when I helped Linda Womack take down her show at Arabella, I asked her about using encaustic over the oil pastels. She told me to fuse, fuse, fuse and let it dry otherwise it will smear (which is the problem I was having). So now, I’m working on a couple more vibrant pieces with oil pastel underneath encaustic medium and am being sure to fuse, fuse, fuse.