Encaustic

Encaustic is one of the oldest forms of painting and is derived from the Greek word enkaio “burn in”. This painting was created around 3000 years ago in ancient Greece when shipbuilders used a mixture of resin and wax to seal and impregnate ship hulls. By embedding the pigments in the wax medium, the color strength was preserved.

It’s very difficult to replicate ancient encaustic recipes. An interesting article about technology of ancient encaustic medium was published in Microchemical Journal by Elsevier in 2017:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026265X1730869X

One of the main problems with working with encaustic was finding a way to melt the wax. It was not until the 20th century that the invention of portable electric heaters revolutionized the art form and made encaustic an art technique that could be carried out. This relief and the success of the early encaustic painters gave rise to a revival of hot wax painting. Encaustic is a relatively new medium in the repertoire of contemporary artists, and many pages of its history have yet to be written.

My favorite techniques are encapsulating, painting with encaustic, oil and pigments, and photo collage with encaustic.

If encaustic layers are executed properly one can build up to 30 layers creating 3D-relief painting.

Looks like cell clusters in a petri dish  ?🔬

As a chemist I am especially interested in studying of self-assembly and self-organization in inorganic materials. Self-organization is the autonomous formation of complex structures from units of less complexity by local internal interactions. Heat convection in fluids is one of the simplest examples of self-organization.

Here the process of natural convection in melted encaustic media with fine distributed metallic particles takes place. The driving force is gravity. It occurs because there are hot and cold regions of fluid, which becomes less dense as it is heated.