Sarah Beitler

Untitled #0604
encaustic & toner on canvas
6 x 12 in.

Art represents a continual search for a rare sort of happiness. I am motivated to generate beauty from common-day thoughts, places, or objects. I seek this beauty through a refined sense of balance and organization in the composition of luminous encaustic landscape paintings centered on Western Pennsylvania countryside. The simplicity of the scenery and glowing quality of light is well suited for wax-based paintings.

Instead of photo realist representations, my landscapes come from my own interior perspectives as well as exterior vistas that I shoot with my camera. Clearly defined structures and objects often accentuate the landscape. Traditional landscape artists strive to obtain a likeness to the particular place they are painting. I choose to focus on the luminous qualities of light present, and the irregular but natural marks that result from using a medium that is so hard to control.

It may seem irrelevant to paint serenely lit uninhabited spaces in this age of urbanization and technological advancement; such spaces are becoming ever rarer and less relevant to the main culture except as nostalgic fantasies. However my attitude towards painting these half imaginary, half representative scenes is that of the contemplative interpreter.

© Sarah Beitler