After painting in oils for almost two decades, I began to experiment with the encaustic wax process in the 1990s. At that time, I had been studying Jasper Johns' work and wanted to know more about this unique medium.

Encaustic paint dates to the 5th century B.C. and was originally used in Greece to decorate ships, in portraiture, and to polychrome statuary. The best-known examples are the Fayum funeral portraits made in the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. It was studying these incredibly lifelike images that triggered my interest in making representational work in encaustic, using the same ancient recipe of dried pigment, beeswax, and damar resin.

As a representational painter, my impulse was to translate the same techniques for oils to the encaustic medium. But it was not that straightforward. Working with melted wax presents many obstacles. The paint must be applied very quickly before it cools and hardens. However, the unique surface quality and effects it can produce are worth facing the challenges.