Lola Baltzell
Statement:
Like the female painter in Virginia Woolf’s “To the Lighthouse”, I am
terrified of the blank canvas. “Where to begin?— that was the question
at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas
committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable
decisions.”
I work with mixed media, to give myself a starting point. You will often
find collage elements in my pieces and I also love working on and with
found objects. Bits of thread. Ephemera of all sots. If it will adhere
with encaustic wax, I will use it
My Russian grandfather was an immigrant and ran a junk yard on the wrong
side of the tracks in Albert Lea, Minnesota. As a kid I loved to roam
around the lot and explore whatever showed up. I still do that. I love
dumps, yard sales, random things found in the street or in the woods.
Bio:
My first love was black and white photography. I photographed mostly people and enjoyed both that aspect as well as developing film and prints in the darkroom. In the early 1990’s I beganto make big, bold oil paintings. Next came collage. I participated in a project that was shown in China in 2008. And I started The and Peace Project, which was shown at the Moscow International Book Fair in 2012
and The Tolstoy Museum in Tula, Russia that same year. Eventually I discovered encaustic painting at an open studio around 15 years ago. Mixed media encaustics brings it all together. I continue to explore.
The pieces presented here are encaustic monoprints which was a new discovery this spring.
