News - Where Sky Meets Earth
This March, The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh presents a series of atmospheric works by American artist Janise Yntema ...
Press Release
From Thursday 2nd to Saturday 25th March 2023, Where Sky Meets Earth combines fine art with philosophy, with the majority of the paintings in this exhibition made during an extended visit to Scotland in 2021.
Since 2000, Yntema has encompassed the Scottish landscape and atmospheric weather into her practice, visiting Oban, the Isle of Mull, the Isle of Staffa, Fingal’s Cave, Fort William, Mallaig, the Isle of Skye, Portree, Ullapool, Inverness and St Andrews, Perth and Edinburgh. Despite this, the subject is more to do with the when rather than the where. Allowing the viewer to participate, and move through the landscape.
Yntema specialises in the ancient painting technique of beeswax encaustic. Encaustic is named after the Greek word for 'burned in', as wax and pigment are fused onto a surface with heat. Binding pigment with wax for painting long predates pigment in egg white and plaster for tempera and frescoes. The medium enjoyed revivals in the 18th Century as Pompeii and Herculaneum were uncovered, sparking the desire to understand the techniques of ancient painters, and again in the 20th Century.
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| The Loch, 2022, oil, encaustic and mixed media on panel, 15 cm x 15 cm |
Since 2000, Yntema has encompassed the Scottish landscape and atmospheric weather into her practice, visiting Oban, the Isle of Mull, the Isle of Staffa, Fingal’s Cave, Fort William, Mallaig, the Isle of Skye, Portree, Ullapool, Inverness and St Andrews, Perth and Edinburgh. Despite this, the subject is more to do with the when rather than the where. Allowing the viewer to participate, and move through the landscape.
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| The Green Field, 2022, oil, encaustic and mixed media on panel, 20 cm x 20 cm |
Yntema specialises in the ancient painting technique of beeswax encaustic. Encaustic is named after the Greek word for 'burned in', as wax and pigment are fused onto a surface with heat. Binding pigment with wax for painting long predates pigment in egg white and plaster for tempera and frescoes. The medium enjoyed revivals in the 18th Century as Pompeii and Herculaneum were uncovered, sparking the desire to understand the techniques of ancient painters, and again in the 20th Century.
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| Listen, 2021 oil, graphic and encaustic on arches, 21 cm x 15 cm matted and framed to 40 cm x 30 cm |
Yntema is part of the modernist development of the medium by including original photography; merging the digital and the ancient. In 2018 she was recognised for her outstanding contribution and advancement of encaustic art with the International Encaustic Artists’ Vendéenne Award.
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| The Evening Marsh, 2021, oil, encaustic and mixed media on canvas mounted on panel, 50 x 40 cm |
Yntema said, "My painting methods reflect the possibilities of layered histories: starting points, erasures and eradications through an accumulated language of restrained colour and line. My work in beeswax encaustic has kept an awareness of nature close at hand. The more recent mixed media combination of painting and photography encompasses the tension between the traditional and technological."
The process of making these images involves mixed media; with one technique obscuring another and the subject revealing itself at an enigmatic point. The process is arrested when the journey might have gone on. In Eurydice Awaits (above) Yntema hints that this movement might take us beyond life, in Charlotte’s Way Home (below) that the universal is also in the individual.
Janise Yntema: Where Sky Meets Earth is on at The Scottish Gallery from Thursday 2nd to Saturday 25th March 2023. Find out more at https://scottish-gallery.co.uk/whats-on/where-sky-meets-earth/
Images - courtesy of Janise Yntema/Scottish Gallery
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