Encaustic Painting - Painting with Coloured Beeswax

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Much of this site will be out of action from 21st September to early November during which period you will be unable to order anything.

We apologise for any inconvenience and look forward to a visit from you in November.

The pictures presented on this site were painted by UK encaustic artist, Lester Edenborough, using molten coloured beeswax, applied to a special card base, with heated metal implements.

Encaustic painting dates back over 2000 years to ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilisations, who had none of the artists' media available today. Although different from techniques used in the past, Lester's pictures share the same non-fade and vibrant light reflecting properties of the ancient art.

Lester takes advantage of the various flow properties of molten wax. As the molten wax flows, according to how the tools are wielded, it produces various, somewhat random patterns which can resemble sky, water, undergrowth, trees, etc. The challenge is to recognise when a pattern has potential, and to add other patterns to create a pleasing, artistic whole. The process necessarily requires a large waste basket!

Surprisingly, one of the key tools for producing these 'patterns' is an ordinary travel iron! In the little slide show below, the travel iron played a major part in creating many of the pictures. Guess which ones were painted entirely with an iron!