how long have you been painting?

How long have you been painting? How long have you done encaustic? How long have you worked this way?

brandishing a paintbrush perhaps?!

How long? I know you’ve heard it too; the value behind the question.  The implied weight of the expected answer.

Do you have longevity in the arts? Has your time spent equated to your time invested? Time. Energy. Duration.

not a feather duster; a new paint applicator :)

When did it become the factor of determination in a good piece of art? In the value of an artist?

Certainly time plays a role; each piece created didn’t happen in the hours of the brush to its particular board, but in the months and years that brought the brush strokes of its composition to lie in just the way it has equal its end result.

So I applaud the test of time.

Just not in the questioning of my worth.

But I answer to it here now because I have reached that line of demarcation; I’ve passed over 40 and can be looked at as a person with experience, a life worth listening to based on years passed by….

I have been an artist all my life.

So cliché.

But I have.

So have you.

So has my engineer dad.

And my human resources sister.

And my facilities manager husband.

We have all been artists our entire lives.

Face it, we are here to create. Just as we’ve been created.

I have been an artist my entire life.

I created the life I am living by breathing through each and every day and choosing to awake to the next.

If you want me to look only at encaustic, I have been an encaustic artist for ten years.

 A decade. 

Splattering into my mixed watermedia before finding my right way into the art of encaustic painting.

But the value of this creation is only complete when it is shared.

So I teach.

And I create more; workshops-

kits to bring encaustic more easily and affordably to a wider audience-

a retreat to indulge the art of mixed media encaustic in a dynamic all inclusive way-

a life traveling and instructing

as many,

 as much,

as far as my eyes can possibly fathom; and then some. 

in love. trish