Vibrant Encaustic: A Symphony of Colors

Gualala Arts is thrilled to announce the opening of “Vibrant Encaustic: A Symphony of Colors,” an exhibition featuring the works of artist Larain Matheson at the Dolphin Gallery in the Seacliff Center, downtown Gualala. The exhibit will open on Friday, June 7, from 1 to 3 p.m., and will be available for viewing through June 29.

In Matheson’s own words: “I’ve created new encaustic paintings that highlight color using a palette of shades that define landscape, sea, and abstracts. I am inspired to create new compositions from the natural world we live in. The encaustic medium, using beeswax and oils mixed, allows me to show the many transparencies that appear after I fuse each layer with a torch. The work is impressionistic, hopefully showing the love of color and shapes that have evolved in each new work.

These recent paintings highlight color and shapes and how they resonate. The encaustic process one of building many layers of oil and beeswax fused onto one another. There is planning yet, spontaneity to how I work.  When I paint it can feel like notes of music building into a symphony of color. My vision is that the natural landscape and the architecture of the coast, fuse together in new abstracts and expressionistic colorful paintings.”

Encaustic art is a 2,000-year-old medium dating back to the Egyptians and the Greeks. Matheson has been exploring this medium for the past 13 years. She draws inspiration from the beauty of the local environment, emphasizing elements of air, earth, fire, and water in her work.

Matheson’s tools include melting pure beeswax, mixing colors by adding oils, and melting them at high temperatures. This labor-intensive process allows her to mix many hues, which she applies with brushes onto wood panels. The process can also be subtractive, involving scraping tools or mixed media like photo transfers, collage, and papers embedded into the wax. Each layer is fused with a torch, creating transparency and depth with between 5 to 12 layers of wax and oil paints.

Matheson received her M.F.A. from UCLA in the 1970s, where she worked with artist Richard Diebenkorn. Of all the mediums she has worked with over the past 40 years, encaustic has captured her heart. She enjoys working in both realism and abstraction, inspired by the coastal trails and the natural world.

Matheson has received numerous awards in the Art in the Redwoods shows, the Salon Show, and exhibits at the Encaustic Museum in Santa Fe, NM, the Discovery and Dolphin Galleries in Gualala, the O’Hanlon Center in Mill Valley, and in Colorado. Her work is held in many collections throughout the United States.