alicia tormey

(posted 07/02/2021)

I love to experiment in the art studio. If you have seen much of my work, I’m sure you can tell by now I have multiple artistic personalities. One day I’m focused on abstract pieces, the next I’m working on a sketch of a beautiful butterfly. I used to feel bad that I don’t have one “style,” until I saw a TED talk from an artist who capitalized on that ability (rather than considering it a disability) when he made up a hundred artist personas with bios and created art pieces for them all. Genius. I found the link! Here is Shea Hembrey’s TED talk.

I. LOVE. ART. (in most of its forms), so I easily become distracted and inspired by new materials and techniques. I have seen many encaustic artists use alcohol inks to create these interesting floral-like pieces by blowing the inks through a straw. As you can see below, I tried one of these straw-blown flowers myself. I like it, but it’s probably not something I’m going to pursue. There are artists like Alicia Tormey and Shary Bartlett who do a fantastic job at making them if you want to see some really amazing ones. Check out their work!

So, when I went about creating “Renaissance,” I knew I just wanted an abstract form. I was experimenting with color, mixing the warm pinks and reds with blue. Alcohol ink is VERY vibrant. I can see why people love to work with it. The colors are supersaturated. The control or lack of it is another beast altogether. It’s nearly impossible to dominate it as a beginner. You really need to work with it for hours to get a sense of how to manipulate it to your liking. If you want to regularly work with alcohol inks, you’re going to need lots of time and/or instruction.

I began the piece by coating an 8×10 inch wood canvas with white pigmented encaustic medium to get a clean, white surface. I then added drips of the inks, letting them dry for a half minute or so before blowing them around with a straw. I have read suggestions to use an alcohol ink blending solution, but I didn’t have one so I used isopropyl alcohol to dilute it.

I found that adding lots of the alcohol gave it a much nicer flow, so I went with it.

These were made over a period of two days. I would add the ink and alcohol with an eye dropper, blow it around, let it dry, then come back in with more ink or alcohol to get the desired gradations of color. I think it necessary to mention the main reason it took me a couple days is because the fumes can be overwhelming. I found that if I spent up to about 5 minutes manipulating the inks, I needed to leave the room to let the fumes dissipate before coming back in a couple hours later.

When I fatigued of this process, feeling as if I should somehow elevate the image a bit, I decided to catch it on fire.

Here’s what it looked like after the initial burn or two of wet alcohol on the surface. (The colors aren’t as bright in the following photo because of poor lighting.)

You can see why the process is so intriguing. The colors seized together in places and also created some circular melted areas from the heated beeswax surface. The next thing I did was add some shellac. In order to get the webbing that is so often loved in encaustic works, you need to lightly torch the briefly dried shellac. I have taken one of Alicia Tormey’s workshops on doing such torch fuses. I’d like to use clear shellac pigmented with white or another color to achieve more dramatic effects in the future. The following image is showing the painted amber shellac just before the applying the flame.

And here is the final piece. You can see where the amber shellac separated to create the cells/webbed effect. Also note, I added (and scraped away) some rose metal leaf on the surface. With the vibrancy, effervescence, and viscosity, I think it’s what a brilliant star or divinity might look like if it were to die then be reborn into the universe. Hence, the name.