Back in 2001, I took a month-long artist’s retreat deep in the woods of British Columbia living in a tent on a mountainside with no electricity or running water. I intended to focus on photography which had been a passion of mine for at least a decade, but my camera broke on the first day there. What to do? ... I purchased some acrylics from the on-site “store” (a woodshed stocked with art supplies) and spent my days in this primitive paradise painting on found wood. I haven’t stopped since.

While I now favor oils over acrylics, my medium of choice is encaustic, which allows for endless possibilities in creating layered, textured, mixed media pieces. I love the element of serendipity inherent in the never-exactly-sure-what-you’re-going-to-get fusing process integral to this technique, where the paint is melted pigmented wax. For the past two years, I have also been experimenting with cold wax, which creates a creamy vehicle for oil paint. I apply/remove it almost exclusively with squeegees, as that often leads to unexpected, ethereal fields of color.

I call this series “Found Landscapes” because each one is the result of additive and subtractive meanderings in an open-ended search for place. These paintings were very much process-driven, with color and materials at the forefront. While every piece began with a chosen palette, they inevitably evolved into something entirely different, which was exciting; like driving without a map.

Working on the encaustic (hot wax) paintings was more like an archaeological dig, where razor blades and pottery tools scraped away surface layers searching for bits of history to enrich the story of the place where we finally find ourselves. With the oil and cold wax pieces, paint was both added and taken away with rubber scrapers, in a more delicate way, creating thin layers of both transparency and opacity, again searching for a coveted vista.

The collection as a whole can be seen as a road trip taken with no particular place I had to be, welcoming surprises around every bend, these images like snapshots to remind me of my journey. Although most are titled with some of my favorite locales on the Outer Cape, I named them after they were painted by choosing 9 places and seeing which piece most reminded me of each.

A member of the SoWa Artists Guild and United South End Artists, Patricia has maintained a studio at 450 Harrison Avenue in Boston’s South End since 2009, and recently returned from a 3-year sabbatical in Italy. She has had the pleasure of forming relationships with collectors both around Boston and across the globe.

Oh, and when she is not painting, Patricia teaches high school math.