Liminal Trilogies examine the boundaries of three aspects of the natural world.  The first triptych in the series compares Animal/Vegetable/Mineral.  Each element extends from, floats on, or is submerged into beeswax filled excavations.  Animal displays locks of my hair; Vegetable presents slices of tree branches; Mineral’s rocks move in and out of circular beeswax pools like pebbles in a stream.  The heavily carved surfaces of the shaped wood panels are painted with encaustic and mimic or recapitulate the textures and colors of the objects each painting holds and suggest dynamic environments where the objects interact and reside in a constant state of flux.    Wax visually, conceptually, and physically binds the objects to painting structure and viewer to a simultaneous microcosm/macrocosm.  The wood surfaces contain many layers of encaustic carved away and then later added to along with sanding and shaping–all in a process of destroying and creating the surface texture.  Similarly, we are continually in a process of destroying and creating our fragile connections with each other and the earth.  The carved and sanded ply of the wood “unearths” and compresses history and time.

Future triptychs for this series will closely inspect sections of earth at different times of day as a way to reveal how light, texture, and color can define and/or penetrate form.  My upcoming residency at The Burren National Park (Burren College of Art) in County Clare, Ireland will uncover many liminal secrets of this unique landscape containing:  Limestone Pavement, Calcareous Grassland, Hazel Scrub, Ash/Hazel Woodland, Turloughs, Lakes, Petrifying, Springs, Cliffs and Fen.