Levitation I 15" x 16 1/2" Encaustic, collage/wood, 2006

I work with encaustic on wood, canvas and print to combine pigment, beeswax, and fire with collaged text and aggregates. Melting beeswax and damar crystals, applying brushfuls of colored molten wax, and “burning in” with the torch, all merge the concepts of evolving form and psychological layering that I explore in my work.

I layer up and dig down to find a hidden path to meaning. Repetitive shapes and marks cross the surfaces like shorthand messages; they cover information and questions that lie beneath—the “play within a play.” What is seen on the surface is not the only story.

Segments of collage are visual components. Strokes, text, and marks relate to and give clues to content. Reservoirs of information that might not typically appear together align themselves, cross over, and connect. Short phrases form layers of substrate. Sometimes the visual narrative unfolds like leaves of a book or a diptych, with a spine/vertebrae. Each mark’s independent energy, each embedded shape and translucent color field, express states of mind, matter, and surprise to make the art object a reliquary of personal and universal information. Questions of choice, process and syncopation are asked, explored and unanswered.

Studies in ancient Greco-Roman painting, sculpture and drawing, Asian calligraphy and
Joseph Albers’ color theories influence my work. Recently, I have been captivated
by the illumination and levitation of the light, water and land of the Columbia/Pacific
area of SW Washington state.

Joan Stuart Ross
2008