Maine artist Sara Crisp utilizes wood panels and employs the ancient technique of encaustic painting, in which powdered pigments are suspended in a wax medium fused with heat. She builds up the surface of each painting layer by layer, which results in a translucent surface with a worn, pitted and porous texture. There is a central opening in each piece that functions as a trap of an array of found natural objects beneath cloudy layers of wax and a thin sheet of mica.
Crisp’s work displays the raw physicality of the wax, its luster and depth drawing you in to its delicate layers; embedding bones, insects, and plants, to a state of fossilization. She works with an innate sense of duality-- man vs. nature, order vs. chaos-- creating a contrast between sharply constructed lines and raw natural elements. She connects us to the past not only with her technique, but by incorporating the grid, the most primitive manifestation of rationality and order, creating an imaginary space within which her chosen natural objects relate to each other and intersect with the artificial.
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