Artist Statement
Angela Hansen
I have recently started working extensively with the "new" old medium of encaustic. I learned about the medium at a professional development workshop many years ago, but have only been creating with it seriously in the last year or so.
What I find fascinating about this medium is that it is both sculptural and painterly, unlike anything else I have ever used; it has rejuvenated my love of painting and taken my art in an entirely new direction. There is something visceral about working with heat and the smell of melted wax. Encaustic paint has a warmth and luminosity to it and allows me to push the boundaries of what one would consider traditional painting. It enables me to build layers, work smoothly, add textures, embed objects, carve into it, work on a variety of substrates and even sculpt it; it is surprisingly durable. My work is a reflection of explorations with this intriguing medium.
What I find fascinating about this medium is that it is both sculptural and painterly, unlike anything else I have ever used; it has rejuvenated my love of painting and taken my art in an entirely new direction. There is something visceral about working with heat and the smell of melted wax. Encaustic paint has a warmth and luminosity to it and allows me to push the boundaries of what one would consider traditional painting. It enables me to build layers, work smoothly, add textures, embed objects, carve into it, work on a variety of substrates and even sculpt it; it is surprisingly durable. My work is a reflection of explorations with this intriguing medium.
Artist Biography
I grew up on a small horse ranch near the BC interior town of Quesnel.
Directly after graduating high school I moved to Vancouver and attended the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, (now Emily Carr University of Art and Design). I received a certificate of Design with a major in Graphic Design. I worked as a freelance designer and in small print shops for a few years then decided to upgrade to a degree; I now hold a Bachelor of Design with a major in Communications Design from ECIAD. I then earned my Teaching Degree from the University of Victoria and have been an art teacher in the Central Okanagan for the past 11 years. I currently teach art, media art and photography at George Elliot Secondary in Winfield.
I live in Kelowna with my husband and young son.
I have worked with a variety of mediums in the past, including; charcoal, ink, acrylics, block-print, photography, and clay and have been showing my art and photography since I was a teenager, mostly in the Kootenays and Central Okanagan. I joined the local group Livessence around 2005 when I worked almost exclusively with the human form - my work took a drastic change from figurative charcoal and acrylic paintings to a more abstract form in encaustics after the birth of my son in 2008. I have been working almost exclusively in encaustic since then.
Directly after graduating high school I moved to Vancouver and attended the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, (now Emily Carr University of Art and Design). I received a certificate of Design with a major in Graphic Design. I worked as a freelance designer and in small print shops for a few years then decided to upgrade to a degree; I now hold a Bachelor of Design with a major in Communications Design from ECIAD. I then earned my Teaching Degree from the University of Victoria and have been an art teacher in the Central Okanagan for the past 11 years. I currently teach art, media art and photography at George Elliot Secondary in Winfield.
I live in Kelowna with my husband and young son.
I have worked with a variety of mediums in the past, including; charcoal, ink, acrylics, block-print, photography, and clay and have been showing my art and photography since I was a teenager, mostly in the Kootenays and Central Okanagan. I joined the local group Livessence around 2005 when I worked almost exclusively with the human form - my work took a drastic change from figurative charcoal and acrylic paintings to a more abstract form in encaustics after the birth of my son in 2008. I have been working almost exclusively in encaustic since then.
