Carolyn Holman says that art is an opportunity to connect with her intuition. She began her artistic career in commercial art, and also worked in fine art primarily with chalk pastels. Some few years ago, she decided change to encaustic painting, a process that dates back to ancient Egyptian times. Carolyn uses materials such as pigment, resin crystals and beeswax. The resin and heated beeswax mixture is brushed on wood while still hot and in liquid form. Once the wax cools down and becomes firm enough to paint on, she applies the first layer of oil paint. She then brushes the clear beeswax mix on top, and then heats again using a blow torch – this is meant to seal the paint in and bond the layers together. When cool, the images can be seen and colored brush strokes captured in the wax medium which is clear.
Sometimes Carolyn uses found material such as handmade paper or leaves to suspend in the wax. For her recent work on a flower series, the artist used handmade papers and oils collaged into the wax; this resulted in an attractive and captivating play with layers and color texture. She currently works out of her studio in Portland, Oregon. This is where she says, she gives herself permission to speak from the source of where she’s in that moment. To Carolyn, mediums are interchangeable; as long as she can find a way to involve texture, color, layers and form. What she loves about encaustic and chalk pastel painting is that it takes the viewer time to see all that is there.
