"Screwing things up is a virtue." - R.R.

wow... I have not done encaustic in a long time nor have I done much of it. I decided to start with one of my new prints. I spray mounted the photo onto a simple board and then began to melt wax over it. I had some lucky with the experimentation. The photo burned and cracked with the heat gun and I liked the effect it had on the photo. I am interested in doing more with this process but I feel that the photo is lacking conceptual intellect. I want to develop more of concept through the piece. I am currently playing with tension that is both created in the original image as well as the direction of the wax and they it melts into the photo.

I have been doing some research and reading up on ways to experiment with my photos. I have decided to get back in the dark room. I talked with Roddy and I have plans to manipulate my photos while they are being developed and then use this work with my encaustic paintings. I want to blur the lines between photos and paintings. Photography is painting with light and i would like to play with this idea in combining my work with wax and paint. 

I looked at some awesome work today by Catherine Yass and Wolfgang Tillman. They both have done a lot of photo manipulation in the early stages of the developmental process as well achieved the painterly quality in their photographs. I found a lot of things I want to try and play with through my research today. The best advice I gained from today was said by Robert Rauschenberg, "Screwing things up is a virtue." 

here are the early stages of my photo encaustic