Melchior, Amy
Notes 2007
In The Beginning
Following her near sell out exhibition from last year Amy Melchior returns to show a new series of highly stimulating encaustic works.
Some believe that life itself formed from deep sea hydrothermal vents and so I started investigating. I became intrigued by these exotic looking mounds, spires and chimneys billowing black smoke and teeming with a multitude of strange creatures and thus "The Creation" was formed. The more I learnt about this amazing world, in the abyss, the more I wondered, if this was the start of life then what is happening to those precious life forms in the face of global warming and our changing seas. I found lots of disturbing information. The works in this exhibition are about the need to stop and think of how beautiful yet fragile it all is.
"A thousand half drunk cups of tea .
A thousand empty seas .
Am I wasted in a wonderland or
wondering in a wasteland ." Amy
The first documented examples of encaustic painting date back to ancient Egypt, where it was used to decorate sarcophagi and to depict a realistic image of the entombed on a kind of face plate. The ancient Greeks were known to have used this process too, but for very different purposes. The hulls of their boats, where cracks had appeared, were filled and thereby waterproofed by an application of encaustic materials. The prows of these boats were also adorned with encaustic coated figureheads. During the 20th Century, artists, most notably Jasper Johns, have used encaustic painting techniques to give us many a modern masterpiece.
