Sky Madness

Elizabeth Sloan Tyler Award for Fine Art
See Ellen Koment’s work in the 2017 Special Winners Edition

paper, wax, and pigment
44” x 30”

Wax is different than other mediums. It is mutable, fluid, responsive, and forgiving. It is hotter, faster, and more physical. It doesn’t wait for you; instead, it hardens and you must apply heat to reawaken it. It sings your song and resists control, although control is entirely possible. It bends to your ways and leads you down new paths. It has its own voice and its own language that suggests and leads, responds and obeys….Form, color, and spirit are the language of painting. They serve the real concerns—inspiration, intention, and concept—which are brought into reality through the sometimes challenging but always rewarding medium of encaustic. Encaustic flows more, breathes more, has more depth, and has an inherent beauty. Encaustic painting, as all painting, is the exploration of the internal manifested as the external. It is a spiritual practice, a developed routine: it is an extension of our being.”

–From the afterward, by Ellen Koment, in Encaustic Art in the 21st Century