Lyrical encaustic artists

While browsing encaustic artists' websites, I came across a few artists whose work resonated with me. The three artists below make use of Japanese washi or rice paper infused with wax, exploiting the paper's translucent qualities. Eisenberg and Guthridge both make use of photos printed with archival pigmented inks on Japanese paper, rendering semi-abstract segmented panels (Guthridge also superimposes panels)—like small windows of time for us to pause and look through. Roland first draws with coloured wax medium on a metal hotplate, then pulls monoprints from the wax layer.

All works evoke zen-like ethereal visual haiku poems, sometimes lit from behind, sometimes suspended away from the wall, fluttering, or mounted behind clear acrylic. The works seem to whisper to us softly in passing... inviting our eyes to touch....

Jeri Eisenberg

Sugar Maple Floaters (Orange), No. 6, 2008
Archival pigment ink on Kozo paper infused with encaustic, 36 x 34 in. Ed. 4/12, triptych
Source: http://www.markelfinearts.com

Jane Guthridge

The Space Between, Triptych - 4
Source: http://www.janeguthridge.com

Paula Roland

Connecting Dots
Encaustic monotype exhibition (backlit)
Source: http://http://www.paularoland.com

Haptic visuality

The very essence of the lived experience is moulded by hapticity and peripheral unfocused vision. Focused vision confronts us with the world whereas peripheral vision envelops us in the flesh of the world. 

 - Juhani Pallasmaa, 2005

The hands want to see, the eyes want to caress.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

In contrast to optical visuality (a seeing which masters and represents), haptic visuality is tactile, kinaesthetic and functions like organs of touch.

- Laura Marks, 2002 

Haptic visuality

For the 'sensate skins' responsive installation, I prepared a transformation video from a series of still photos of J and arbutus trees in Vancouver. The videos were projected onto the lycra skin panels during the awakened state of the piece, as the interactors passed through the space. They showed slow transformations from tree (bark) to human (skin). Before the start of the transformation, while the installation was in a dormant state, the interactors could hear the haunting sound of a lone shakuhachi flute.

'lighthard' above shows the transformation process at a point half-way through the video where the peeling skin of the arbutus tree is superimposed on J's trunk... layers of skin peel slowly to reveal sensuous, colourful textures... trunk on trunk, one form becoming the other. The lone dormant tree is thus awakened and embodied, given a human form.

When an image has texture and is slightly out of focus, it seems to invite us to touch with our eyes, to visually caress the image space, its lines and textures. It is like seduction, I guess. I was interested in exploring this visual tactile quality and evoking a complicity between tree and human. I've always been intrigued by the representation of the human body.

Touching with the eyes

I see what I see with my eyes. I also see with an inner eye that transforms what is before me. The hand, the camera lens and my computer assist to capture and show what I really want to see.

Haptic visuality can be described as touching with the eyes. Viewing a textured or blurred image seems to make us want to reach out and touch it, explore it further. This blog explores haptic visuality, transparency and the notion of folds through digital photography.

As an artist, I am interested in capturing the body, especially in states of real or imagined transformation, evoking the real of the unreal or the unreal of the real, where darkness, transparencies and folds combine to show various forms of dynamic corporeal and psychical stases—dreamlike states lived by the sensate body in unreal worlds, experiences that shape who we are in the real world. Elements of time, memory, natural textures, rebirth and sensuality imbibe these still, intimate worlds.