You can tell by looking at her work that Oregon-born artist Betsy Eby has spent lots of time near forests, buttercup fields and the silvery bark of birch thickets. Nature’s rhythms have indelibly informed her artistic sensibilities. Eby is an encaustic painter; encaustic is a medium that dates back to the 4th century B.C. She heats and layers beeswax onto canvas wrapped around birch panels (custom made by her father in his woodshop!) then paints with a blowtorch. The visual effects are striking: visions of whirling leaves, buzzing insects, sheets of ice, and birds in flight appear above the laminations.
Trained as a classical pianist, Eby’s current work has her visual documents talking back to classical music compositions. Her latest exhibition “Painting With Fire: Works by Betsy Eby” will be on view at The Columbus Museum (Columbus, GA), October 27, 2013-February 23, 2014.
Betsy Eby, “Nocturne Sprezzatura,” 2013 45 x 35, Encaustic on Canvas on Panel
