After a career in administration, Barbara made the move to Lincoln College of Art in the early 1990s through an Access course designed for mature students, followed by a foundation course and finally a fine art degree at De Montfort University, Lincoln. During this time she became interested in mixed media which took her away from painting. Given a bag of beeswax pellets by a tutor, this much later, became the catalyst for her encaustic work. She didn’t use the beeswax for many years, but kept it through several house moves, eventually exploring the internet for ways of using it. The rest, as they say, is history.
Working with a mix of beeswax, damar resin and pigments, the surface is made up of many layers. Each layer is fused and manipulated with a blowtorch. This creates an organic, textured surface which is ever changing. Building up with layers of colour, scraping and sculpting the surface and bringing up colours from below by hard fusing, is in itself a kind of alchemy which holds a sense of depth, movement and impermanence.
The work is based on remembered elements of landscape and usually begins with a response to colour. Sketches and photographs may provide the beginning, but the work quickly takes a different path.
Echoing the geological changes in the earth’s surface, or a change in light and atmosphere, the work is process driven and often becomes abstracted and removed from the original idea, but that’s the aim, allowing the medium and the blowtorch to create the rhythm of the natural word.
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