A Sponge at the Bottom of A Large Bucket
- A recap of my private workshop with master encaustic painter Emma Ashby.
In early March, I traveled to Portsmouth, NH, to take a private workshop from an encaustic painter I have long admired.
And by long admired, I mean I have been to the bottom of her Instagram page. I have spent hours on her website looking at her paintings, attempted to recreate some of them as a master study exercise, and really done everything this side of out-and-out stalking.
My drive to learn (ahem, stalk all of her socials) from her process was that she achieved a quality in her paintings that felt so far beyond my reach that even Frodo would not have been able to find it.
Something in the way she wields her paintbrushes gives her paintings a glowing urethral quality that I could not recreate or even get close to, no matter what I did.
I had to know HOW??!!!
How were we using the same encaustic paint and painting similar landscapes yet getting such wildly different results?
The painting I painted with Emma
The Workshop
Emma was the kindest, most patient, and most generous instructor.
She did not hold anything back.
She answered my miles-long list of questions, demonstrated her techniques, and allowed me to follow along and try her techniques by her side.
(She didn’t even hide her good brushes from me!)
She made me soup!!!
I love soup.
By the time we were done with our day, my brain felt like a waterlogged sponge that had been in the bottom of an old bucket of rain water.
I could not physically absorb any more information.
Of the takeaways from my time with Emma, the biggest was how gentle and patient she is with the paint vs. what I now recognize as a war hammer approach.
She uses thin, delicate brushes to apply thin, delicate layers of paint.
I use thick, bulky, $2 hardware store brushes that come 12 to a bag and slop paint on like mayo on a homemade roast beef sandwich.
The type of brush I use vs. the delicate goat hair Hake brush Emma favors
She uses a heat gun. While it takes longer to fuse the wax, it maintains a more consistent temperature and doesn't overheat the wax paint.
I use a variety of blow torches because fuck yeah, FIRE Wooohoooo!
She allows her oil paint accents to dry for up to two weeks before continuing to work on a painting.
I hit that paint with more fire and keep going.
She treats the wax paint with care, almost like it might break if she is not exceedingly careful.
I treat the paint like it will run away if I don't slop it down and heat it into submission as fast as possible.
She is a ballerina dancing the lead in Swan Lake in a pristine white tutu with paintbrushes, and I am Ozzy Osbourne, with too many piercings, one of which is infected, flinging paint at the center of a mosh pit.
W A R H A M M E R!
It is no longer a mystery why her work looks so different from mine.
Emma paints with a gentle, delicate patience that I would have never considered had I not taken the time to learn from her.
When I got home, I ordered a heat gun, the delicate brushes, and the special encaustic-specific tools she uses.
I don't want to mimic her art but borrow from her patience and techniques.
Now that I know there is a different way, I'd like to experiment with that way.
Ideally, I will maintain my style while softening a little.
A painting I pained using Emma’s techniques with the clunky tools I have on hand.
Maybe I can be the black swan in this encaustic rock opera version of Swan Lake, which may or may not smell better than an infected 75-year-old rock star in the middle of a beer soaked mosh pit.