Background
My work in encaustic photographs started with what seemed like bad luck. In April 2009, I was in Fort Worth, Texas for an art show, and my cargo trailer, containing more than 200 of my hand-printed and custom-toned silver gelatin photographs, was stolen. To further complicate things, my husband and I had just relocated to Portland, Oregon and were living in a temporary rental house with no potential for a darkroom. I couldn’t replace the stolen work until my darkroom was reestablished.

I had been a silver gelatin printmaker for more than a decade, but if I were to finish the shows I had scheduled, I was going to have to start printing my images digitally. I had been thinking about making the switch for a couple of years due to environmental and health reasons, and I took the theft as confirmation that it was time for a change.

After a few months of digital printing, I found my enthusiasm for my work quickly diminishing. I missed the craft of being in a darkroom and being physically involved in the creative process. I needed to get my hands dirty. Not wanting to return to an environmentally harmful process, I began experimenting with encaustic.  Being made of sustainable materials (beeswax and tree resin) and free from harmful solvents and chemicals, encaustic was the perfect solution.

My current body of work combines encaustic medium, which I make in the studio with natural earth pigments, non-toxic oil paints and digital photographic prints. The resulting works are labor-intensive, one-of-a-kind pieces that have an ethereal, dream-like quality. And I love the process. I now spend my studio time in a light-filled space engulfed with the aroma of beeswax.

Statement
I create both still life and landscape imagery. My work in still life explores themes of rebirth, renewal and metamorphosis through the visual language of plant and animal forms. I photograph these images in the studio on a 4x5 camera.

My landscape images are concerned with the strength and fragility of the natural world. Often expansive, these works celebrate the majesty and beauty that surround us and their faded and distressed natures suggest they are like dreams or memories that are slipping away. Most of these scenes are photographed in the Pacific Northwest on medium and large format cameras.