International Encaustic Artists CanWax East Chapter
WAX!T Curated by Mary Ambrose
Acknowledgements
Karma Creative artist development consultants
IEA CanWax East - WAX!T
Karma Creative artist development consultants are based in Toronto. We give our attention to the development of individual artists, with an adult focus, individualized and expert guidance, and within an art-making community. We take a developmental approach to learning and art-making. From our start as a teaching and working studio, we have expanded into off-site and community-based programming. We work with you to help you get from your current art-making level to wherever you want to go! We work with individuals and with groups, large or small. Our programs include direct instruction, portfolio assessment and development, preparation for gallery-readiness, independent curatorship, and workshops. We’ve worked closely with North York Arts to help them launch their new gallery space with both a visual arts exhibit and a one-day artist development conference. Our founders’ dynamic combination of education, experience, and programming skills will enhance your individual goals or your group’s programming. Maggie is a practicing visual artist with a business and health management background. She brings experience in a variety of sectors (including hospital, non-profit, and arts services management) to her work at Karma Creative. With extensive theoretical knowledge of cognition and its practical application in the workplace, Maggie uses a variety of creative approaches to assist individuals and organizations use art and art-related activities for personal and professional development. Karen is a practicing architect and visual artist. She works in a variety of sectors in the capacity of architect and workplace consultant. As a community volunteer she has lead boards to expand their focus and extend their capacity. She brings an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to her work in all arenas. Karen’s particular interest in adult learning as a developmental, leadership, and growth opportunity enriches your experience with the arts. Maggie and Karen are partners at Karma Creative artist development consultants. We welcome artists working in many media with skills ranging from novice to expert. We combine our extensive academic training with practical experience and a personal touch.
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Wax!t is an exhibition of contemporary encaustic art, presented by artists of the CanWax East Chapter of the International Encaustic Artists (IEA). The IEA is a non-profit professional artists’ organization that seeks to raise the level of excellence in fine art encaustic work by providing a global information exchange and by raising interest about encaustic art in the art world and with the general public.
Curator
Encaustic, which means to “burn in”, or fuse layers of wax, is one of the oldest forms of painting in the world. The eight artists represented in this exhibit bring a broad range of richness and diversity of styles and techniques in encaustic painting. The artists include: Dania AlObaidi, Mary Ambrose, Maggie Doswell, Wendy La Valle, Emily Mandy, Claudia McKnight, Melissa Tseng and Linda Virio.
Karma Creative Artist Development Consultants
The John B. Aird Gallery/Gallerie John. B. Aird opened in 1985 and was named in honour of the twenty-third Lieutenant Governor of Ontario to recognize his exceptional support of the visual arts in Canada. The mandate of the Gallery is to create awareness and enjoyment of works by contemporary professional artists.
Mary Ambrose President, CanWax East Chapter, IEA
karma-creative.ca
Mary Ambrose
John B. Aird Gallery/ Gallerie John B. Aird
Niamh O’Laoghaire, Director
Maggie Doswell and Karen Chisvin
Catalogue Layout Michael Doswell
Printing
dm Printing
John B. Aird Gallery Gallerie John B. Aird cover art by Dania Al-Obaidi
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IEA CanWax East - WAX!T
Dania Al-Obaidi Dania Al-Obaidi is an Artist living and teaching Art in Mississauga, Ontario. Born and raised in Iraq, her work is heavily influenced by the richness and beauty of both old and new world flare. She studied fine Arts in Baghdad University and continues further training in Canada at Humber and Sheridan College alongside with extensive exhibitions in Canada and the Middle East.
Fly
Her most favourable passion is Abstract Paintings. She uses intense combination of materials and colors in her work. Dania Al-Obaidi believes that an Artist work should come within a person through a lifetime of acquired skills and the wonders of experiences. Only then can an Art speak for itself. She prefers using the properties of Encaustic Painting as the choice of expression on wood and different mediums. She flirts with Mixed Media on canvas, wood, and handmade paper from time to time.
30 in. x 30 in. 3
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IEA CanWax East - WAX!T
Mary Ambrose My work for “Wax!t” explores the way mankind passively accepts environmental conditions and catastrophes and normalizes them into every day patterns of living. Questions arise as to whether or not these environmental states are real or just a distortion of science, political and media red flags.
A Nation at Risk 21 in. x 48 in. 5
I have been working in encaustic for a few years and have been very experimental in terms of technical approaches and diversity of subject matter. The nature of wax allows me to approach my paintings in many different ways that are not available in other mediums. Currently, I am exploring encaustic through creating an organic underpainting that provides a structure and speaks to the final layers of wax. I then create line work which appears almost three dimensional in nature. This adds a powerful texture to a body of work I call “The Environmental Condition.” Working in encaustic has pulled me in very positive directions as an artist and provides me with a medium that allows me to speak and connect with the viewer in very emotional ways.
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IEA CanWax East - WAX!T
Maggie Doswell Maggie Doswell is a Canadian visual artist working in Toronto. Her work is held in local and international collections. She combines solid technical skills in art-making with strong conceptual formations in her work. This relates to her academic training and her inate visual interests. Maggie creates work to be comforting and soothing to the viewer, to provide a natural calm. She likes to use texture and colour to achieve this goal. She is currently creating much of her work in encaustic; a process of melting wax and adding oil paint. As a painter, Maggie likes to move from one medium to another but to keep her work grounded in painting. “Painting helps me to translate the beauty of the peaceful place I find in nature.” Much of Maggie’s work is nature abstracted by color or in form.
Meditiation 7
14 in. x 27 in.
“While we are all capable of rest and relaxation in many ways, I feel that art that we love helps us to relax and unwind. This selection of work is created to help the viewer to a tranquil state. I have used soothing color and the rich organic texture of wax to help with the journey.”
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IEA CanWax East - WAX!T
Wendy Lavalle Wendy LaValle is a graduate of the University of Windsor, Seneca College & Toronto School of Arts with over 10 years studio practice in Encaustic painting. She works from her home studio in the beautiful countryside near Stouffville Ontario, which is within the protected conservation area known as the Oak Ridges Morraine. “It’s the influence of nature that’s the focus of my ongoing series GHRE. I’ve spend countless hours exploring natural environments both locally and aboard....I find this time both meditative and spiritual...having a calming and rejuvenating effect. I try to capture this response with luminous colours, glossy textures; images of vast fields, mountains, lakes, skies, deep forests....channelling mother natures most subtle expression.”
GHRE 9
24 in. x 24 in.
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IEA CanWax East - WAX!T 11
Emily Mandy
My work expresses joy and awe in the face of natural beauty so often ignored or degraded by human enterprise. I celebrate the congruity of elements which give solace and refreshment to body, mind and spirit. Working in encaustic reminds me daily of the fragility and endurance of bees whose labours produce the wax I use in my art. As rich and varied as nature itself, encaustic provides an extraordinary medium through which to honour the earth.
Dancing Pines 20 in. x 32 in.
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IEA CanWax East - WAX!T
Claudia McKnight Through mixed media on scarred panels, eroded wood and stressed paper, I explore landscapes of memory and possibility, and journeys of the mind and heart. Each painting comes into being slowly and searchingly. Compositions are suggested by the physical site, the irregularities of the painting surface and the actual process of layering and mark-making. Fissures, knotholes and other imperfections suggest initial carving, construction and brushwork. Pools of pigment are then scribed for contours and shapes. Configurations from the environment work themselves into the imagery: the streamlined ellipse of a canoe, the arc of a satellite in the night sky. Further markings not only record topography, but seek to mirror the physical energy of the natural forces and personalities that shape the site. My paintings have developed as a response to the overwhelming power of nature, first in Lake Penage, northern Ontario; then in Newfoundland, British Columbia, and the Yukon; and now on Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, Ontario. Increasingly, the process of charting territory has become a vehicle for expressing a sense of place and a sense of self.
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Breathing 18 in. x 22 in.
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IEA CanWax East - WAX!T
Melissa Tseng Academically trained as a lawyer, Melissa Tseng left the practice of law when she realized: “the work you do while you are procrastinating is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life”. Primarily self-taught in encaustic painting, Melissa draws her creativity and inspiration from childhood memories of time spent with her late grandfather, a visual artist who trained under the Group of Seven. Throughout her youth, they spent much time painting, drawing and discussing art together. Today Melissa paints full time in a studio she shares with a collective of local Artists. She is best known for her soothing large-scale contemporary paintings. Melissa’s luminous, ethereal and textured encaustic compositions have been critically acclaimed and collected across Canada, the United States and South Africa. She currently lives in Toronto with her husband and two young children.
Horizon 15
48 in. x 60 in.
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IEA CanWax East - WAX!T
Linda Virio The forces of nature inspire, amaze and unsettle me. My work is influenced by weather and seasonal events in my backyard and rural surroundings. I am intrigued by nature’s patterns, such as cycles of birth, decay and then rebirth. The notion of nature as friend and foe, benign and malevolent, play into the works I create. I live in the country, surrounded by trees, overlooking a pond, visited by an array of wildlife. This is the lens through which I view the world. Visual and physical artifacts from travel may find their way into my work, but are often juxtaposed against a bit of nature, picked from the path on the way to my studio. Intrigued by decay, rust and fire, I will often fuse materials affected by these elements between the wax layers.
Tsunami 16 in. x 16 in. 17
The pure mixture of beeswax and dammar resin becomes the perfect medium to express nature-based themes. Like nature, molten wax is fluid and somewhat unpredictable. I enjoy the challenge of working with, but never dominating it. I live in Bowmanville, Ontario and work out of my studio in a small converted barn, fifty steps away from my back door. I paint, exhibit and lead encaustic workshops locally.
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John B. Aird Gallery Gallerie John B. Aird