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Rhonda Raulston
from "Wax & Wildflowers" exhibition - International Encaustic Artists & San Antonio Art League & Museum
Lovinia’s Journey
7.75 x 28.75 x 3.37 inches
$750
The theme of this exhibition gave me an opportunity to combine my ongoing interests in genealogy & family history with herbal lore and art. My mother’s family arrived from England in the 1600s and steadily moved westward, culminating in the birth of my grandfather, who was born in 1880 in the wilds of the Colorado San Juan Mountain Range midway through the family’s journey from Illinois to California.
These journeys were full of hardship and danger and the only available medical help came from the herbal remedies that had been carefully handed down through generations. The plants in these remedies were often found in fields of wildflowers and from plants found along the journey.
As an homage to my great-grandmother Lovinia and the accumulated knowledge of generations of women, I imagined what her Herbal Receipts journal would look like - ailments paired with healing herbs, recipes (or “receipts”, as she would have said), sketches of the plants, and advice.
I used materials that would have been available to my great-grandmother. The pages of the journal are made from lightweight paper; the sketches are pen and ink, colored with gouache paint, and slightly aged as if they were over 100 years old. Each page is encased in protective beeswax, and the elegant “handwritten” entries are photo transfers embossed into the wax. I imagined that her journal was hand-made, especially for this purpose, and was carefully passed down through generations.
Was Here
12 x 4 x 3 inches
$330
Growing up in rural coastal Marin County, nature has always been an important part of my life. With the National Seashore, State Parks, and endless wildlife areas at my back door just waiting to be explored, it is no surprise that themes of nature are ever present in my work.
My encaustic floral works are an abstract, dream like representation of blooms. With my Novel Bloom series I merge my love of typography, in the form of book pages, with my love of florals. The text adds texture and mystery to the threedimensional forms of the blooms.
