The craft of artist
Shawna Moore
By Michael Somerby EBS ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR
BIG SKY – For Whitefish artist Shawna Moore, who has several
encaustic pieces on display in Gallatin River Gallery, her vision starts with
water.
Most have experienced that transcendental moment Moore draws
upon to form the basis of her unique works—standing on the edge of a body of
water, watching the light dance on both rippled and placid surfaces—and the
special form of existentialism it evokes.
Moore, who works primarily with encaustic, pigmented wax
blocks heated into a malleable liquid, believes our relationship with water in
such a moment goes beyond the obvious visual beauty.
“We’re born in water, suspended in it until we hit the
ground. We need it, the majority of our body water, and so we have this deep
connectivity with it,” Moore said. “It’s this archetypal relationship we have
with place … it’s empty, and wide and a place to contemplate your existence.”
A self-proclaimed “responsible ski bum,” Moore grew up in
the landlocked, yet mountainous splendor of Bend, Oregon; she found that open
bodies of water spoke to her in ways that even the mountains couldn’t.
Her work highlights the intense and intimate bond she has fostered
with the liquid element through a lifetime of artistic and personal
exploration.
Moore, who has been a creative since childhood thanks to ready
encouragement from her mother, studied fine arts and architecture at the
University of Oregon in Eugene, the latter discipline serving as a solid
foundation for an evolving and exclusive interest in the arts.
“I started taking more art classes and sidelined my interest
in architecture indefinitely, even though it was a great underpinning,” Moore
said. “I feel fortunate that’s how I was trained.”
Throughout her late 20s and early 30s, Moore worked in
representational ways with a number of mediums, with a couple of community
galleries in Eugene and Bend showcasing her works. But in 2002, after moving
with her husband to Santa Fe, a New Mexican city with a then-rapidly growing
appetite for all things art, Moore came across an ad for a class in encaustic.
The young artist had encountered the art form in her
studies, in literature and museums, but had never delved into the ancient
practice of manipulating melted waxes into art pieces.
But one lesson was all it took: Today, the artist works almost
exclusively with the medium, and is known for her daring large formats and
unique pigments.
“Of the people that work in encaustic, I’m known for the
color and size of my work,” Moore said. “It’s hard to control a surface as big
as you are, and I’ve had to scale up all of my tools.”
An encaustic artist such as Moore will utilize a quiver
complete with metal tools, brushes, heat guns and lamps, blowtorches and
several other methods to manipulate the rigid material, cherished for its 3D
qualities and ability to manipulate color and light.
For Moore, these virtues of encaustic are much like the Treasure
State she now calls home.
“The wax is not completely flat, it suspends the particles of pigment, light
dances around them,” Moore said. “When you put pigment in wax it’s more
spacious and light than other types of mediums, kind of like Montana. That’s
what keeps you in it.”
