Keith Kavanaugh uses electric grills for palates, a slab of birch plywood for a canvas and chunks of colored wax for paint. The results are captivating pastoral scenes.
In about 30 minutes Sunday afternoon, Kavanaugh produced one of his encaustic paintings for a knot of spectators. Following the demonstration a reception in the Bowlus Fine Arts Center’s Mary L. Martin Art Gallery featured Kavanaugh and his creations, which are on display in the gallery through May 14.
Encaustic painting is the process of heating and fusing layers of wax, with pigments mixed with the wax creating the image, Kavanaugh explained. The process has been around for centuries and there is evidence that marble statues in the ancient world were decorated by the encaustic method.
Encaustic painting fell out of favor through the years to oils, acrylics and other modern mediums.
Kavanaugh embraced the medium, he said, to escape the odor and toxins of oil painting, and also because he “wanted to go to a more natural form.”
Beeswax and harder Brazilian wax are used to coat panels he makes from birch plywood, with ones 16 by 24 inches his favorite. The wax is applied under about 150 degrees of heat, to dilute and smooth it, from a device similar to a hair dryer and then is shaved to a thin coating when dry.
Colors come from commercially prepared wax-based pigments, mainly white, black, blue, yellow, green and earth tones.
“Some encaustic painters mix pigments with wax themselves,” he said, and while he prefers birch panels, most any medium could be used: “Canvas, glass or plastic would be fine.”
He uses common paint brushes to apply the colored wax, which is mixed with clear wax on a hot plate to get the right tone. Brushes also are kept warm and supple — they stiffen quickly when wax dries — on a second hot plate. Clear wax — for coating the panel and then to dilute colors — is melted in a small electric skillet.
KAVANAUGH uses photographs as a reference for paintings, and adds and subtracts from real-life images to get the effect he wants.
“Sometimes I put the photographs away and work from inspiration,” he said.
Sunday afternoon he created a simple but intriguing rural scene from a sketch he had done beforehand.
He lightly sketches an image on the panel as a guide before he starts a piece and occasionally adds to the sketch as he goes along.
“Sometimes you can see a hint of a sketch in my paintings,” Kavanaugh said, from late additions.
In his Jackson County, Mo., studio, Kavanaugh has special daylight bulbs in lights to give proper visual perspective while he paints, and uses household tools, such as ice picks and knives, to accentuate paintings.
