Brief History of Encaustic Art

Encaustic, meaning “to burn in or fuse”, is a painting medium composed of beeswax and resin. Encaustic painting is one of the oldest painting techniques we know. It goes back at least to ancient Greece and Egypt, where artists mixed beeswax with pigment and applied it hot to wood panels, marble, and even mummy portraits (the Fayum portraits are a famous example). The wax made the colors rich, luminous, and incredibly durable, some of those paintings are still glowing almost 2,000 years later. Over time, encaustic was largely replaced by tempera and oil, but it never really disappeared. In the 20th century it was rediscovered by modern artists who loved its tactile surface, depth, and the way you can build, scrape, and fuse layers.

Bees, the Human Animal, and Gold

I use beeswax and gold leaf to think about the condition of the human animal. This strange creature that is both wild and self-conscious, instinctive and spiritual.

Bees are a mirror for us. They are intensely social, building intricate structures together, each small life woven into a larger pattern. Their wax is literally the architecture of a hive, the record of a shared life. When I paint with beeswax, I’m working with a material made by another animal community, and that feels important. It reminds me that humans are not separate from nature; we’re another kind of animal trying to build meaning and beauty

The gold leaf brings in another layer that is the old language of icons, halos, and sacred light. The wax holds the physical, earthly side. The gold reaches toward the unseen.

Together, beeswax and gold let me paint the human animal as something paradoxical and honest. Caught between the ground we walk on and the light we sense but can’t quite name.

“Pay attention. This life is sacred too.”