Creative Process
ENCAUSTIC AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Painting and Pouring
The flexibility inherent in encaustic painting enhances our creative process; it allows the ideas for which we may not find expression in another medium to take shape. There is a give and take with encaustic and a broad range of possibilities that the medium allows. The methods we employ with encaustic allow us to access those parts of ourselves that we want to explore. Generally speaking, encaustic is the most forgiving of mediums—you can add, scrape off, and redo. There really are no changes that you can’t make. This is part of its broad appeal—the endless ability to move forward and back until you arrive at the end point. Pouring on paper, for me, required a very different approach than working on panels. On panels, I could both add and subtract. The immediacy of pouring on paper presented a very different kind of challenge, as well as an excitement.
Over the 20 years or so that I have been working with encaustic, and the 15 years that I have been teaching it, I have seen the vast array of possibilities that encaustic offers as a medium and how it enables artists to tap into their innermost resources and give voice to their spirits. The ability of the medium to assume many forms with relative ease, its fluidity and mutability, allows it to reveal its form to the artist’s eye.
However, working with encaustic requires an enhanced awareness of process and the ability to be at one with its immediacy, so that it is a genuine partnership between the artist and the work. I want to be in control and, simultaneously, relinquish that control to the process. In its best moments, the image emerges as a gift. How it came into being remains something of a mystery.
To get to that point, I have to guide the process, prepare for the moment, allow it to happen, and recognize it when it does. I have to remain aware. When I apply paint, what is happening? When I apply heat, I want to know exactly where the point of my flame is, where the point of contact is between the heat and the surface, and what it is doing.
Pouring on paper, for me, presents the greatest challenge of all. I must be ready with enough paint, a good idea of where it will go and what it will do, and then abandon myself to the moment. The paint stays fluid for a very short time, and I have to guide it to its place on the paper during that brief moment. I am in control and not in control, but trying always to be aware of where the paint is going, what is happening, and what the painting requires next. What does this color do on my paper, how does this second color interact, and what else is needed? Most important, when is there nothing left to do? Am I willing to stand behind the painting? Is it just close, or does it resonate with some intangible sense of what is right for the painting and for me?
Stieglitz called his photographs of clouds “Equivalents.” My understanding of that is that the photographs were the equivalent of an ever-changing inner state. The painting is finished when I recognize it as the equivalent to what I want to say.
The gestation of an idea can be a long and varied journey, and that is the great fun of it. It’s there, unexpressed or not fully expressed, until one day it becomes clear to you, in your mind or in your painting. You work and work on something (or on a group of somethings) until you recognize that it has attained its form. The trick, of course, is not going past that point and starting a new cycle of exploration and discovery on the same painting. Be aware. Stop when you should. Or stop long enough to know if it is finished or not. Listen to the painting.
Ellen Koment
Santa Fe, NM 2010
http://www.ellenkoment.blogspot.com
http://www.nmencausticworkshops.blogspot.com
Painting and Pouring
The flexibility inherent in encaustic painting enhances our creative process; it allows the ideas for which we may not find expression in another medium to take shape. There is a give and take with encaustic and a broad range of possibilities that the medium allows. The methods we employ with encaustic allow us to access those parts of ourselves that we want to explore. Generally speaking, encaustic is the most forgiving of mediums—you can add, scrape off, and redo. There really are no changes that you can’t make. This is part of its broad appeal—the endless ability to move forward and back until you arrive at the end point. Pouring on paper, for me, required a very different approach than working on panels. On panels, I could both add and subtract. The immediacy of pouring on paper presented a very different kind of challenge, as well as an excitement.
Over the 20 years or so that I have been working with encaustic, and the 15 years that I have been teaching it, I have seen the vast array of possibilities that encaustic offers as a medium and how it enables artists to tap into their innermost resources and give voice to their spirits. The ability of the medium to assume many forms with relative ease, its fluidity and mutability, allows it to reveal its form to the artist’s eye.
However, working with encaustic requires an enhanced awareness of process and the ability to be at one with its immediacy, so that it is a genuine partnership between the artist and the work. I want to be in control and, simultaneously, relinquish that control to the process. In its best moments, the image emerges as a gift. How it came into being remains something of a mystery.
To get to that point, I have to guide the process, prepare for the moment, allow it to happen, and recognize it when it does. I have to remain aware. When I apply paint, what is happening? When I apply heat, I want to know exactly where the point of my flame is, where the point of contact is between the heat and the surface, and what it is doing.
Pouring on paper, for me, presents the greatest challenge of all. I must be ready with enough paint, a good idea of where it will go and what it will do, and then abandon myself to the moment. The paint stays fluid for a very short time, and I have to guide it to its place on the paper during that brief moment. I am in control and not in control, but trying always to be aware of where the paint is going, what is happening, and what the painting requires next. What does this color do on my paper, how does this second color interact, and what else is needed? Most important, when is there nothing left to do? Am I willing to stand behind the painting? Is it just close, or does it resonate with some intangible sense of what is right for the painting and for me?
Stieglitz called his photographs of clouds “Equivalents.” My understanding of that is that the photographs were the equivalent of an ever-changing inner state. The painting is finished when I recognize it as the equivalent to what I want to say.
The gestation of an idea can be a long and varied journey, and that is the great fun of it. It’s there, unexpressed or not fully expressed, until one day it becomes clear to you, in your mind or in your painting. You work and work on something (or on a group of somethings) until you recognize that it has attained its form. The trick, of course, is not going past that point and starting a new cycle of exploration and discovery on the same painting. Be aware. Stop when you should. Or stop long enough to know if it is finished or not. Listen to the painting.
Ellen Koment
Santa Fe, NM 2010
http://www.ellenkoment.blogspot.com
http://www.nmencausticworkshops.blogspot.com
