Egyptian Cartonage:

Turning the canvas into a three dimensional sculpture, giving body to form.

Commentary: I have been working with the encaustic process for 30 years and, over time became interested in the originators of the process. I investigated the images of Lascaux which were painted with a form of encaustic (pigments added to animal fat from cooking fires). The Ancient Greeks and Egyptians also used Encaustic (pigments added to melted beeswax). In addition to painting with the encaustic medium on boards, the Egyptians used cartonage as a medium for jewelry and mask making. The processes I use in my work are based on the all natural and non-toxic Ancient Egyptian and Coptic method of painting.

As you can see from the juxtaposed images, the cartonage gives a full bodied character to the piece. The cow in each piece is the same cow from the Lascaux caves. The one painted on cartonage has dimensionality while the cow painted on paper is a flat figure form.


Title: Black Cow - Lascaux Size: 12" x 16" Medium: Encaustic on Egyptian Cartonage		Title: Dancing Ladies Size: 11" x 15" Medium" Encaustic on Paper

Title: Galloping Horse Size: 12" x 16" Medium: Encaustic on Egyptian Cartonage		Title: Bull with Ibex Size: 11" x 15" Medium: Encaustic on Paper

The works on paper have a decorative, lyrical appeal while the sculpted cartonage gives the works a full formed dynamic reality, as if a piece of the cave wall had been cut out and mounted on the wall.


Title: Unicorn Size: 12" x 16" Medium: Encaustic on Egyptian Cartonage		Title: Guardians Size: 11" x 15" Medium: Encaustic on Paper

Evolution of a process and idea:

I was introduced to the encaustic medium in the 1970s. The studio I had was located in an old high school building which had been converted into a shopping complex on the ground level. The upper five stories of the building had been unused for years until an artist in the city convinced the owner to open the classroom areas to artists for studio space. A lot of creative sharing went on. One of my neighbors, Ted, was researching alternative media and resurrected the encaustic process. He taught me how to melt wax and mix pigments into it and turn it out onto a glass plate to work the pigment and wax into a solid mass, let it cool down and then use it like a crayon. I did some research of my own and a little inventing to create a heat table which allowed more flexibility while working with the wax crayons. The encaustic works on paper above were rendered on the heat table.

After fifteen years of learning how to apply the wax and working on a series of transcendental landscapes and cloud formations I became interested in the background of encaustic and its uses in the ancient world. I looked into the images of Lascaux, Ancient Egypt and the Minoen Civilization whose images were all rendered in different forms of encaustic. Although petroglyphs are not painted images, because of their ancientness I worked with them as well.


Title: Pink Size: 28" x 36" Medium: Encaustic on Canvas		Title: Elm Tree - Golden Gate Park Size: 14" x 16" Medium: Oil and Encaustic on Canvas

		Title: The Deer Hunter Size: 11" x 15" Medium: Encaustic on Paper
Title: The Water Bearers - Minoan Size 15" x 12" Medium: Encaustic on Canvas

The Deer Hunter shows the beginning of the idea of a rock. The rock shape is embedded into the rectangular picture plane. Pursuing the idea of creating an image on a rock I tried ripping the paper and creating cracks, shaping the paper to look like a rock.


Title: Black Cow - Lascaux Size: 11" x 15" Medium: Encaustic on torn paper		Title: Torn Elk Size 11" x 15" Medium: Encaustic on torn paper

The torn paper process was as close as I could get to emulating rock while still working on a flat surface. At the time I was also experimenting with hand made paper and resurrected another process from Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians combined linen pulp with Roman casein glue to create a pulpy paste that they could form into various shapes; masks and jewelry beads being the most common items unearthed by Archeologists. I made a batch of cartonage from recycled paper and applied it to a metal window screen I had stretched over canvas stretchers bars. Once applied I carved lines into it and shaped the still flat surface into a semblance of a rock formation and then painted the surface. The result was rather pleasing. So pleasing in fact that I didn't know what to paint onto it. It seemed too lovely in itself to alter. I left the series to incubate and it wasn't until an art patron commissioned four Lascaux pieces that I again looked at the cartonage process.


Title: Rock Wall Size: 14" x 14" Medium: Gauche on cartonage base		Stretched wire support (back view) of "Rock Wall"


Egyptian Cartonage on wire form for commissioned work		Unicorn - Angel View

The evolution of the Lascaux series has been quite exciting for me. I am especially intrigued to look at the beginnings of the idea in the The Deer Hunter and see the idea come to fruition beginning with torn paper, experimenting with hand-made paper and culminating in something that does, indeed, look like a rock. Throughout the development of the process, images would come to mind, and, step by step the process unfolded of itself.

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