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| Beeswax, Encaustic | |
Collectors want to know… Is encaustic archival? Is it durable? Will it last? The answer, if the painting is made correctly and handled gently as you’d handle any other piece of art, is a big, resounding YES! Encaustic is archival, and in most cases, will outlast paintings made with oil. The Fayum portraits are a beautiful testament to the medium’s durability. They date from the late first century B.C. to about 300 A.D. and “are the only large body of art from that tradition to have survived.”
Encaustic paintings survive, in part, because the wooden surfaces they’re painted on are preserved/impregnated with beeswax, rendering them resistant to moisture and mold. Also, encaustic paint doesn’t just sit on the surface it’s painted on. It’s bonded on with heat, literally melted into whatever lies beneath, making it less likely to flake off with age. Here are three things beginning painters can do to make their work archival. 1. Choose a rigid, absorbent surface to paint on. It’s important for the wax paint to bond with its substrate. Birch and maple plywood are good choices. Paper or fabric coated wood is also an excellent choice. Traditional stretched canvas is too wobbly to hold wax paint. You need something stiff. 2. Don’t mix acrylic and encaustic paint. I know it’s tempting for acrylic painters to mess with wax… and the results might look cool in the short term, but water and oil repel each other. It’s only a matter of time before an acrylic/encaustic painting starts to flake apart like nail polish flaking off a ten year old’s fingertips. 3. An un-fused encaustic painting is kind of like sandstone, full of seperate layers that come apart under stress. Use heat to fuse each encaustic layer to the one underneath to make a painting that lasts. | |
I think it has something to do with the transformative properties of wax, the way it changes & elevates the materials it’s used with.
