Local favorite Liz Priestley returns to Weswal with a mini solo release in our Stockroom Gallery.
Liz Priestley is a regional artist living and working in the small village of Manilla, in northern NSW. Encaustic is her chosen medium. Liz’s work is best described as a combined interpretation of both the immediate physical landscape, and that of the internal landscape. It is an exploration of the subject, viewed via a nostalgic lens.
“Memory and an emotional connection to place, are the elements I try to bring together in my work.Our earliest memories are what fascinates me. I strive towards pinpointing the connection between our first impressions of our environment, and its emotional corollary within our future. Landscape is our conduit for the spiritual, this has been illustrated across cultures and generations. By using encaustic, I am alternately layering, carving and scraping out an image. There is a revelation in the work as it progresses, and its final form. This process is a physical representation of searching those layers of memory. The resulting image is the vehicle in which the viewer resonates with their own epiphany of personal, binding memories”
Her choice of encaustic (wax) as a medium in the creative process is for both its architectural and reductive qualities, allowing for a narrative to build through the layers which can then also be selectively revealed by carving, scraping and melting. “I began using encaustic with oils as merely a vehicle to add texture and layering to my work, about six years ago. Over time however, as I became comfortable with the medium and I realised its amazing properties and the extent of its flexibility; I started to use it as the base medium for all my work. Encaustic has a unique combination of characteristics which I love: It hardens immediately so there’s no drying time, it is semi-transparent and so layering can bring out lovely images, and it can be sculpted into. Not to mention that you can transfer images onto it, polish the surface, collage onto it and use a multitude of other mediums with it!”