Wax is a very versatile artistic medium.  A superhero of adaptability, wax can be combined with painting mediums, added to the surface of ceramics, collaged with paper, layered over photographs, used to transform sculptural objects, and as a resist in watercolor and batik.  Wax can be brushed, incised, transferred, glazed, cut, formed, assembled . . . it’s truly a fascinating medium with countless possibilities. Artists work with wax both heated and cold, using different processes to achieve distinct visual results.

Historically, encaustic paintings that have survived from the Greek and Roman empire are still as vibrant and colorful today as they were when they were painted 3500+ years ago. The encaustic process involves heating a mixture of beeswax and damar resin (a natural tree sap that acts as a hardening agent) with pigments to add color. Once cool, encaustic paintings are very durable. The beeswax and resin are impervious to moisture making them extremely archival; the medium will not yellow or darken.

While sharing a foundation in the encaustic medium, artists Erin Hughes and Liz Rundorff Smith chart different visual languages in the Time Capsule exhibition. To better understand the relationship between their materials and their artistic visions, we invited them to detail their techniques. Read on for an inside look at their unique processes.

Erin Hughes hanging one of her landscapes in her studio.

Liz Rundorff Smith holding a paper piece in her studio.

Erin Hughes begins her painting process using a heated griddle as a palette with pools of colored encaustic medium in a range of colors and tonal values ready to mix with her brush. She layers the encaustic medium, fusing the layers of wax together with a torch as she adds medium and mixes colors. Heat binds the encaustic medium and allows Erin to create opaque or translucent layers that can then be scraped, textured or polished.  She can scrape into the surface to reveal different colors in pre-existing layers and add more wax to build a painterly composition of brushstrokes mixed with scraping. Once the encaustic cools, Erin rubs a final, thin veil of oil paint onto the surface to highlight the scrapes marks and scars left behind by her carving tools, giving the work depth and a sense of physical history.

Erin's various pigmented waxes and brushes

For Hughes, the encaustic work included in the Time Capsule exhibition explores our limited ability to retain fleeting visual experiences in the natural world. Because we can only hold onto fragmented details of a beautiful landscape, the passage of time inevitably brings a deep sense of loss as clarity fades. Ultimately, the memory of a place and moment in time becomes beautifully obscured in Erin’s work, expressed through fading light, deep shadow, and the heavily layered, weathered textures of the wax itself.

Erin uses a razor to texturize the wax surface of a piece

While Hughes uses wax to capture the fluid, fleeting nature of memory, Liz Rundorff Smith approaches the encaustic medium through a more structured, architectural lens. Rather than painting freely, she uses the medium to construct a dense, sculptural foundation. She often begins a piece by mapping out a tile-like grid, using tape of alternating widths as a template, and fusing the layers with a heat gun to manipulate the forms. 

Once the tape is removed, a distinct, three-dimensional ground is revealed. Onto this structured surface, she overlays paper cutouts, juxtapositing the grid with organic forms that reference vessels, urns, shrines, and monoliths. She sponges a thin layer of pastel onto the paper shapes, an application that she repeatedly scrapes away, redefines, and builds back up. By combining the pigmented encaustic medium with transparent pastel tones, color shifts with every added layer, ultimately leaving behind an eroded, weather-beaten surface.

Liz using a heat gun to fuse wax layers into her grid

In the Time Capsule exhibition, Rundorff Smith’s physical manipulation of material mirrors her conceptual focus. As she confronts the feeling of loss that accompanies physical deterioration and the uncomfortable reality of existing in an aging body, the encaustic wax itself becomes a site for translating this vulnerability. She processes fragility by gathering paper scraps left over from her templates of vessel forms, transforming discarded remnants into entirely new, hybrid structures. By recycling fragments that would usually be thrown away and sealing them into the wax, she shows that time and experience are never truly wasted. Ultimately, the work centers on rebuilding, using the additive nature of the encaustic medium to frame her change in creative process as a continuous journey rather than a break from the past.

Templates for Liz's graphic shapes.