Written by: Aleksandra Kaliszuk

This month, Twist Gallery is hosting an encaustic art exhibit. For those less familiar with the term, encaustic paintings are created by layering pigmented hot wax onto various mediums and manipulated to illustrate the artists’ vision. This unique technique results in beautiful textured artworks.

Each artist featured in this month’s exhibit creates encaustic work that is mesmerizing and unique.

Sandy Middleton

Sandy Middleton is a Canadian photographer and artist; she combines both passions to create her pieces. Photographs are often the main element in her works, while using beeswax and other materials to enhance the image and how it is perceived.

Dania Al-Obaidi

Dania Al- Obaidi is a local artist, living and teaching art in Toronto. Throughout the years, her love for abstract painting has developed into a passion for encaustic art. She believes that art should come from within a person, and is a reflection of their lifetime, skills and experiences.

Anastessia Bettas

Anastessia’s encaustic abstract pieces connect the urban developing world with the world of art. She uses grid to portray urban sprawl, loss of open space and imaginary territories. Her work can be admired in various commercial and public galleries throughout Canada and the USA.

Susan Fisher

Susan Fisher combines her interests in printmaking and photography with encaustic techniques to create beautiful art pieces. Susan shares her talents and expertise through private workshops, and is part of various solo and group shows throughout Canada and the USA.

Claudia Mandler McKnight

Claudia  Mandler McKnight uses encaustic painting to express landscape and its reflective presence of place. Her work and its imagery is often inspired by the physical painting surface, its imperfections, and the overall process of creating the work. She is a visual arts teacher and maintains a private practise as an art therapist.

Maggie Doswell

Maggie creates work that combines geometric shape and pixilation using wax and ink compositions, describing the transition from reality to abstraction, inviting the viewer to look more closely at the compositions and its meanings. She believes that visual art is a connection of material and artist through a process.

Joya Paul

Joya Paul is a mixed media visual artist, often including a combination of collage, photography, found objects, drawings, pastel and oil paint in her work. She opened up Second Door Studio in 2015 and continues to work on her art and exhibiting, while also teaching workshops. She hopes to inspire others to discover art as an outlet to express emotions.

Ann Sheir

Ann Sheir’s background in fine art, pottery and graphic design influences her work as an encaustic artist. Ann’s work can also be admires at her gallery/studio in the Distillery District and at Second Door Studio; she teaches workshops at both locations.

Carolanne MacLean

Carolanne is a local Toronto artist. She creates work that is figurative and abstract, seeking to illustrate the absolute point of beauty through colour, form and texture.

Kato Wake

Kato is a graphic designer and painting instructor in Prince Edward County. Kato believes that the creative process of painting is playful dialogue in which the conversation between the canvas, materials and the artist. It is a symbolic and physical experience in which colour plays a significant underlying role. Once the dialogue stops, the painting is finished.

Ian Varney

Ian Varney is a local artist, using bright colours and linear motions to create encaustic works of natural scenery. Ian’s goal is to integrate unrelated images to create new places that are not found in reality.