Jennifer Buelin

"Yoginis are both benign and ferocious. . . " — at Smithsonian's Freer Sackler.

Statement:

“The ethereal translucency, richly layered textures, and forgiving malleability of encaustic captured my imagination the moment I first saw an artist fusing with her torch. The thrill of the fire and the smell of the beeswax are exhilarating.

I once stumbled upon a gallery’s call for entries open exclusively to encaustics, featuring the theme of the science of bees and wax. It was a pivotal, unpredictable, life-altering day. I registered for beekeeping school and an encaustic workshop, ordered my first hive, and became guardian and student of this fascinating superorganism. Each of my encaustic paintings contains some wax made by my bees.

At times, like yoga, painting is a moving meditation. Other times it’s a search to discover or recall touchstones of personal identity. I gather photographs, sketches, and journals from my travels, and I develop each composition in response to the sensations and memories I’ve associated with an experience, a time, a place.”