Catherine Eaton Skinner – Tangent CXIV

Description

Artist Statement

Water has been my muse for over sixty years, through childhood on Lake Washington’s shores, farm years on San Juan Island, and now studios between Seattle and Santa Fe, where the Big Tesuque River runs past my window. My work in encaustic wax, built in transparent and opaque layers and fused with fire, holds water’s own duality: calm and turbulence, reflection and depth, memory and erasure. Horizontal lines mark the boundary between sky and water, land and sea, while scraped and incised marks trace water’s record onto stone and
shoreline. Rivulets follows water’s descent, the vertical seep and thaw traced into wax. Surge and Tangent CXIV hold water’s turbulence, its darkness breaking into light, the accidental and unexpected that come when control is released. Water dampens earth, extinguishes fire, humidifies air, and frames space. It carries memory forward. My practice is an offering to that continuum, an attempt to stay present within it.