JANE ALLEN NODINE
Primary Research
Merging traditional and historical techniques of image and art-making with contemporary forms of technology. Current work involves image development through film and digital photography blended with traditional applications of drawing and printmaking that use new forms of printing technology with the historical process of encaustic hot wax painting.
Artist Statement
I gain inspiration from a variety of sources including nature, popular culture, history, and by all means, living and working in the South. Currently I am working on a body of image-based pieces that parallel an abstract series of patterns and textures inspired by natural aging, transformation, and processes of oxidation. Both series are driven by cultural and historical sources, with an emphasis on memory as related to record, trace elements, or the vestige of some past activity. The non-objective abstractions incorporate naturally occurring marks and patterns made from iron oxidation, better known as rust, with burn marks, and monotypes pulled from various surfaces. The patterns and marks are applied to panels between layers of paper, pigment, and encaustic wax. As the layers develop, some elements become obscured in the hazy film of the wax, as others become more evident and appear to float or come forward in the luminous properties of the material.
Years of working as a jewelry–metalsmith has given me a keen sense of heat as a tool for making art, and the molten wax feeds my desire for working in a liquid state that moves to a cooled, firm, and durable material. The encaustic process, and the endless capabilities of wax, including the warm honey aroma, the historical significance, and luscious surfaces, have energized my ideas and opened new directions in my work.
I describe my approach to making art as a process of excavation. Visual and conceptual clues reveal ideas and images that emerge in both anticipated and unexpected ways but destination is never the same twice, and there is no map, no definitive ending or preconceived plan of travel; only a sense that something waits to be revealed.
Jane Allen Nodine