These are paintings I made in 2008, using woodcuts of ants and other insects printed on Japanese rice paper, and glued to the work with clear medium. The images were drawn in charcoal, painted with encaustic (hot wax mixed with oil pigment), and coated with clear hot wax or clear acrylic. Encaustic is an exciting medium to work in, since the time one has from hot wax pot to canvas is only about 10 seconds. There are lots of "surprises" which I like to call "opportunities". There is also the lesson to be learned from the Persian poet Rumi, that the motion of your finger is the same as your finger. No separation of flesh and intention.

8, 9, 10, 11 These little landscapes are pure encaustic, painted in 2007 from the porch where we stay on Block Island, RI every fall.

This year, with all the fuss about global warming, I found myself increasingly worried about wildlife extinction on the planet, so some of my pieces reflect my concerns. Others were simply suggested by what occurred on the canvas as I applied the wax and allowed my imagination to roam. My favorite is “A Mother Retrieves her child.” two of the pieces incorporate elements of paintings using insect imagery from several years ago, as I get older, insects seem to fascinate me more and more.

This year, 2005, I wanted to find a way to keep the original drawing in the final painting, so I used wax with less pigment, and sometimes scraped back through to the original drawing. I also discovered that one could flow clear wax over the final painting as a kind of ubervarnish, then polish that with an auto waxing buffing wheel, which gives some of the work a really deep glow.

I've been reading lots of Bernard Cornwell, who has given the Arthurian cycle as a new, and probably more historically accurate slant. I've always liked the knights of the round table because Arthur was raised in Cornwall, ancestral home also of all Treleavens. Cornwall was the only county in England never conquered by the saxon celts of prehistory. Such is vanity. But it does explain the titles of these pictures, where I've used generic looking forms and shapes to suggest characters and scenes from Cornwell's The Winter King.

All the paintings are currently priced at $200 plus crating and shipping. Framed work is $300. They can be viewed at my studio in Rockland, MA. (781) 871-2232 or you may visit them at South End Open Studios, 500 Harrison Avenue September 24th & 25th from 11AM - 6PM. The pricing at open studios will be $100 more per painting.

It was nice, then, this year, to be able to explore the possibilities of wax and pigment with some referential imagery crawling in (sometimes quite literally!). It was nice revisiting the possibilities of creating form on a two dimensional surface, color contrast, aerial perspective, all that good stuff.

I like some of the titles too…kind of "out there", wherever that is.

"These are some of the new work I’m doing with Wax Paintings, they are architectural, gridlike, and oddly calming to make."