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MELT DOWN
An Exhibition
of Original Encaustic Paintings
Sheary Clough Suiter
Alaska
Pacific University, Carr Gottstein Gallery.
September 2006
The series for this exhibition is based on my
interest in the enormous peer, cultural, and hormonal
pressures confronting
adolescent girls in our
media-driven, image-obsessed society.
As the mother of a teenage daughter, volatile
issues such as ostracizing those who don’t "fit
in," drugs and alcohol, anorexia,
self-mutilation, suicide, stereotyping and sexual
abuse are genuine and frightening concerns.
Adolescent emotions range
from the heights of ecstasy
to the lows of bewilderment and despair. Moodiness,
confusion, and anger often trigger a loss of identity
and direction. These paintings address the myriad of
struggles and triumphs teen girls encounter during
this transformative period of their lives.
Encaustic, an ancient medium dating back to the 5th
century BC, has recently enjoyed a popular resurgence
in contemporary galleries. I am drawn to encaustic by
the medium’s luminosity and permanence of color, its
capacity to be layered and sculpted, and for the
sensual nature of the warm, aromatic beeswax, which
permeates my studio during the painting process.
To make an encaustic painting, the solid, pigmented
beeswax is melted on a hot metal palette to liquid
form. Within seconds, the molten wax begins to harden
as the pigment-loaded brush leaves its heat source.
After the wax is quickly brushed onto the support, I
melt it again with a heat gun to fuse it permanently
to the previous layers of wax.
Over the course of preparing this show, I became
aware of a number of metaphoric parallels between
adolescent girls and the wax medium itself:
constructive versus destructive, rough versus smooth,
and most particularly, malleability as both a strength
and a vulnerability. Additionally, the painstaking
physical process of creating each encaustic painting
seemed to mirror the psychological intensity of the
adolescent’s journey toward selfhood. Back
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