Carolyn Holman

Carolyn began her artistic carreer in commercial art, as well as working primarily with chalk pastels in fine art. A few years ago she made the shift to encaustic painting, a process meaning "to burn into" dating back to ancient Egyptian times. The materials she uses are beeswax, resin crystals and pigment. The heated beeswax and resin mixture is brushed on wood in a hot liquid form.
When the wax is cool and firm enough to paint on, the first layer of oil paint is applied. The clear beeswax mix is brushed on top, then heated again with a blow torch - this bonds the layers together and seals the paint in. When cool, one can see images and colored brush strokes captured in the clear wax medium. Sometimes she uses found material such as leaves or handmade paper to suspend in the wax. For her recent flower series, she used oils and handmade papers collaged into the wax, which resulted in an interesting and beautiful play with color texture and layers.

Carolyn works out of her studio in Portland, Oregon.

Carolyn began her artistic carreer in commercial art, working primarily with chalk pastels in fine art. A few years ago she made the shift to encaustic painting, a process meaning to burn into dating back to ancient Egyptian times.