Serving Mendonoma Artists
My inspiration and passion comes from the ELEMENTS: EARTH, AIR, FIRE, AND WATER. Nature – rocks, landscapes, skies, ocean influence me. As Matisse says, “the artist is an explorer.” That I am! I love to explore the medium of encaustic and collage. I abstract from nature with paint and beeswax and oil, to become a new space and form. I then fuse each layer with a torch to create transparencies of layers.
Living on the northern California coast influences my imagery with more abstract shapes. I have shown in galleries in Colorado and now I exhibit at the Encaustic Art Museun in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and locally at the Dolphin Gallery, and the Discovery Gallery where I am part of the arts collective. My work is in many collections throughout the USA.
I received an M.F.A. from UCLA where I studied with Richard Diebenkorn, and in San Francisco with J. De Feo, both well-known contemporary California artists.
The layering of beeswax is a process I got hooked on. My tools are the beeswax, oils mixed with beeswax, a torch, and heat gun. I really am in the moment with this process which takes so many layers of brushing and fusing, sometimes 20 layers. The transparency and sensuality of the wax, and of working many layers, is what delights me as many layers of wax and oil are built up and fused.
My work can be seen at larainmathesonart.com and at my studio by appointment. I also continue figure paintings and drawings along with the inner landscapes I paint. I am influenced by the natural architecture of the land and the connections in life through the language of line, color and shape. My paintings try to capture that magic moment where the seen and unseen are made more “visible.”