A background check - How on earth did we get here?

Sometime in the late '80s a geeky ginger teenager was given a small painting. Not content with just liking the painting she wanted to know how it was painted, who painted it and what she needed to be able to have a go. The painting was a small encaustic landscape painted on paper with an iron and stylus. Next Christmas was an even better gift - a low temperature art iron and some coloured wax blocks (thanks Gran!) From then on relatives and friends received little encaustic cards and pictures as gifts, but as time went by, the iron spent time in various lofts as passport and camera were more often in those geeky hands. 

Fast forward a few decades and the ginger is fading to a blondish white and the iron is out of the attic along with a few of the pictures which were never given away..... Here are a few from the 90s.

Fortunately, my questionable obsession with dragons and bats faded by the end of last century but I didn't really get going with encaustic painting until early this year; after dabbling over the last few years with a range of mediums I came back to painting with hot wax - not just on a small scale with iron and paper, but mixing my own medium and colours and painting on cradled wooden panels.

(Through the door - 24'' x18 '' cradled wooden panel - encaustic and mixed media - 2024)

Now there is so much more to explore with encaustic as it can be mixed with so many other mediums and gives translucent and textured effects like nothing else I have ever come across. I feel like I'm just at the beginning of fantastic new journey....