Photo Album

Artist Statement

Coleen M.Tyler

The encaustic medium is a mixture of purified beeswax, pigment, and damar resin. It is heated and applied in a liquid form. It solidifies almost immediately. As a medium, it offers the artist an amazingly diverse range of surface treatments from layering, scoring, embedding, building up, scraping, as well as simple application of the liquid wax by brushing, dripping, or spreading.

My personal interest in the medium began with a three-day workshop where I learned a dizzying array of techniques and applications. That is where I became excited with the possibilities of the medium. Coming from a background in clay, collage, assemblage, watercolor, drawing, and painting, I find the encaustic medium to be very engaging, one that has had a profound affect on the way I work and on the development of my ideas. The speed of the medium and the responsiveness of the surface bring about an immediacy and freshness that is very gratifying.

Influences on my work range from articles in the daily newspaper, radio talk shows and music of all types, to novels I have read, conversations held with friends and overheard, personal stories, family relationships, lectures and workshops, sermons, architecture, visits abroad, nature, you name it! This is the “stuff” of life that interests and motivates me to transfer the trivial and profound into my work in the hope of finding a greater meaning in the process.

Coleen Tyler, 142 North Sixth Avenue, Highland Park, NJ 08904, 732-985-8694, coleen_tyler@yahoo.com