A Brief History of Encaustic Painting

Encaustic Painting has be around since the time of the Greeks. Plutarch mentioned it in a poem in the first century AD:

A beautiful woman leaves in the heart of an indifferent man an image as fleeting as water,

but in a lover's heart the image is fixed with fire like an encaustic painting

that time will never erase.

 In the nineteenth century we saw a resurgence of interest in the medium. Artists tried to recreate the recipes from the early Greek painters. They were interested primarily in the Fayoum Portraits, funeral masks, placed on the mummified body as a memorial.

There are still a few of these nineteenth century recipes around - but it wasn't until the 1950's with artists like Jasper Johns that we saw a rebirth of encaustic painting on a major scale. This was in part, because of the use of electricity, or gas, which made it easier to heat and apply the wax.

Many modern artists have experimented with encaustic painting, and often incorporate areas of wax into their paintings, but because of its labour intensity, most do not continue.

I have worked with wax since I stumbled upon it when doing a series of collages of my women ancestors. I coated the images with wax as this seemed to give an authentic and aged look to the pieces. I decided to study more about this method of painting, incorporating oil paints, wax and pigments. I find it a truly satisfying method of painting and it has now become almost my full time practice. 

More about encaustic painting at R&F Paints