Ascha Kells Drake

Merge
mixed media on wood
24 x 18 x 3 in.

My work expresses the complexities, contradictions, and reconciliation of opposites: inside/outside: push/pull: encapsulation/ freedom: evidence/erasure: delicacy/roughness. I work with overlapping veils of layered patterns and textures. Some patterns are intricate, while others are simple series of lines separating deep layers form one another.

I stand over the pieces while I work; applying, excavating, piercing, puncturing, incising, pounding, brushing, taping, revealing, and concealing. This process is both intense and physical. There are images that contract and constrict. Some forms bump forward while others are shielded; embalmed in a layer of translucent film. When looking at the work, elements appear such as lines which quiver and throb, white dots which are suspended in a cloud of blue, botanical shapes colliding with orbits, and specks that flutter in and out of a misty wall of striated lines. The encaustic becomes a translucent layer of “skin” stretched over a surface embedded with references, pulled taut to express a relationship to cells, plasma, epidermal layers, and fluids.

© Ascha Kells Drake