Art After Hours Presents Encaustic Works by Victoria Primicias | ARTECERA

When Victoria Primicias designed UNC's logo in 2003 at Lipman Hearne, a marketing and communications firm in Chicago, little did she know that one day, she would call North Carolina her home. She moved to the Raleigh area in 2009 and in 2011, she enrolled in an encaustic (wax) painting class.

Today, she is quickly becoming one of the Triangle's most prolific emerging artists. Check out her second exhibit at The Cotton Company in Wake Forest for the Art After Hours event, August 10 from 6–9 pm. http://www.thecottoncompany.net

Encaustic paint is a mixture of beeswax, damar (a tree resin) and colored pigment. Typically, Victoria's process involves a cycle of repetition. Encaustic paint is melted at 200F and applied onto a wooden panel. Each layer is fused with a heat gun or blowtorch, then scraped and gouged before repeating with another layer of encaustic paint. 

This building up of multiple layers exploits the medium's inherent transparency, resulting in a luxurious surface and depth unattainable in oils and acrylics. Encaustics also creates a tactile quality that makes the viewer want to touch the surface, which, according to Victoria, is okay. Touching and buffing the surface with a soft cloth helps to bring out the wax's natural sheen. Like any original work of art, care should be taken to keep encaustics away from direct sunlight and under normal display conditions – that is, not stored in your car's trunk – it will not melt. In fact, the history of encaustic art is a testament to its durability. 

The medium was first used by the ancient Greeks and Romans four centuries ago to caulk the hulls of ships. Soon, it was used to decorate the ship's bow and surfaces of ancient temples. Encaustic painting was popularized in Egypt where more than 600 funerary wax portraits created between 100 B.C. and 200 A.D. survive. The medium began to make a resurgence in the 1950s and continues to gain popularity each year.

Victoria worked as a graphic designer for 25 years, and in her transition into fine art, she finds herself drawn to the same design principles that defined her graphic work: simple, restrained and elegant. Instead of headlines, printer's inks, commercial imagery and body text, she relies on graceful, bare trees, rippling waters and flowing shorelines. She likes to contrast flat expanses of sky or water with highly textured surfaces articulated with tree bark, nails, sand and paper. Her seascapes are serene and her colors are subdued, leaving room for the viewer to contemplate luscious, luminous layers, varied textures, depth and subtle color variations. 

Victoria is currently self-employed as a physician recruiter but pines for a return to her creative roots. Look for her this Friday, August 10, where she'll be the Featured Artist at the Cotton Company's <strong>Art After Hours</strong> event. Her work will be on display until September 8. You can also check out her encaustic work at http://artecera.etsy.com.