Jackson Hole News&Guide: Contemporary encaustic artist waxes poetic

Thirteen artists peered into the glossy depths of an encaustic painting by Shawna Moore, as captivated by its myriad details as her description of it.

After a morning of instruction last weekend, Moore took students enrolled in her Art Association workshop on wax painting technique on a field trip to Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, where her most recent works make up the next “First Friday” show. A reception will be from 5:30 – 7:30 on Friday at the gallery. The show hangs through April 28.

A yoga instructor, Moore led the tour of her 20 works – some free standing, others matted on roughedged paper and framed – as she would a movement class, sharing the techniques and philosophy she has cultivated over the course of two decades in art.

Every morning at home in Whitefish, Mont., she reads passages from Words to Live By, Eknath Easwaran’s collection of daily devotions of philosophers and poets from different world traditions. Afterward, she meditates and writes, honoring all thoughts that surface.

“I start with words and then I gradually work into painting,” she told her students.

In her new paintings, she celebrates these morning readings and reflections in cursive script. Their legibility fades under wax layers but their lines anchor the paintings. One piece – Spinoza – began with a quotation from the Dutch philosopher. Other tidbits – from radio segments or graffiti on trains passing her studio – also appear in her flowing hand.

“We are exposed to so much text,” she said. In encaustic, she distills her visual vocabulary down to its essence. “These are my artistic sutras,” she said, referring to the precepts from Vedic tradition. They are meditations on her process, influences and surroundings.

“All her works over the years have built up to this,” said gallery owner Lyndsay McCandless.

Script began to appear, as did Asian element, in a series of panels McCandless asked Moore to make for Mizu Sushi. Moore is a trained architect, and structural and landscape features also appeared in earlier works.

In the last six months, however, Moore has shifted from the color and geometry of her previous works into large-scare narratives, told in earth tones and incandescent layers.

McCandless considers Moore’s latest works “ah-ha moments.” To capture these fleeting epiphanies, “you better be there,” McCandless said. “You better be watching.”

The painting Sutra highlights the moment Moore realized, in yoga class, that her recent works represent stories.

Approaching the paintings as she would her journal, Moore lays the large panels on a table and moves around on top of them. Once while writing, she inadvertently made knee smudges in the wax, but erased them in subsequent layers. A wall easel allows her to add final layers.

Some techniques began as accidents. She dribbled wax pellets on one painting that popped like air bubbles when heated. The subtle circles make appearances on other paintings.

Her materials are as inventive as her process: she uses oil sticks, paint thinner, pigment and iron, and found or hand made tools like old T-shirts, squirt bottles, wool socks and handmade stencils.

The finished works invite myriad readings. Sam Fitz, assistant director of Lyndsay McCandless Contemporary, saw a map in Blue Lotus, Forgotten Spring, a painting inspired by the birth of Hindu god Brahma from a lotus flower. The scratchings of Tempio relay punk rock, Moore proposed, while its rust coloring channeled Western iconography.

To encourage art conversation beyond receptions, the gallery has started the “SoBo” (south of Broadway) blog at www.lmcontemporary.blogspot.com, with snapshots from openings and links to art happenings.