Scaling Up

When you return from Antarctica I think there is an understandable, natural urge as an artist to ‘go big’ - to try and relay the incredible sense of scale that you witness when you’re there. I have battled with this over the past year. Trying to recreate the fine, fluid and organic melting forms that were happening so naturally in smaller panels is very difficult when you begin to scale things up. With studies for Death of a Landscape I realised that once panels got past a certain size, areas of wax would solidify again before I had a chance to manipulate the rest of the painting. I wanted the entire piece to be fluid at some point and so a smaller panel was needed. But, with help and advice from a fine art print company I’ve been able to enlarge these works for a limited edition print run to a size that reveals these intricate details and I’m very excited about it. It’s been a lot of work and there is of course a compromise - the beauty of encaustic is in the richness and translucency of the wax, but the Hahnemühle Pearl paper we chose for the giclée works wonderfully and I’m looking forward to showing them along with other work from my residency at Touching Ice, an exhibition opening on the 29th June in Bethnal Green.

Read more about these works here