LUC BERNARD
Artist Statement
Encaustic painting is an ancient medium in which pigment is applied in layers of melted wax. It can be a floating veil, gauzy and satin smooth, or, it can be something infinitely more primal, ropey as a lava flow — just as it is in my landscape images.
I create with a mantle of encaustic so thick that it takes on the quality of sculpture, as if the landscapes have only just erupted, half molten from the earth’s core and are even now solidifying in thick, swirling eddies. You feel tectonic forces at work, in these corroded landscapes of iodine and angry orange — forest vistas abraded to the point of erasure, glowering with pin pricks of colour where some older, hotter intention shows through; or clouds of ash and steam and showers of sparks against vermilion skies, like a glimpse into Vulcan’s forge.
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