Accessing Nature’s Dreamscape

Artist CHRIS REILLY fine tunes an encaustic process to portray nature’s eternal transformation and interdependent survival. Drawing inspiration from iconic eastern and western imagery, the artist is fascinated by nature’s duality, the amazing and profound character of plant and life cycles. He incorporates creatures such as frogs, dragonflies, and jellyfish into his paintings, as well as foliage, seeds, and blossoms to reveal or symbolize the constancy of death and renewal around us.

Utilizing a quiet, delicate palette, Reilly’s ethereal work combines realistic representation with immersion into an imagined, mysterious dream space. He begins with a white gypsum ground on canvas or panel and uses pastels and watercolor as an underpainting, which he then seals with molten wax. Layers of encaustic are applied to the foundation, each layer fused with a heat gun. Sometimes he adds opaque watercolor, selectively removed here and there to reveal the original layers. The effect is one of swimming through the sea, coming upon a magical coral reef where you hover, suspended within beauty, gazing enchanted at the seen and the almost seen, accessing dreams of worlds beyond worlds.

Christopher Reilly was born in New York in 1967, attended the School of Fine Arts there, and currently lives and works with his wife MICHELLE HAGLUND, also an accomplished artist, in California.

More images of Reilly’s work, as well as those of Michelle Haglund, can be viewed at: Meyer Gallery: http://www.meyergallery.com

-- Rosemary Carstens
http://www.CarstensCommunications.com

(Top left: Dansel Flies; right, Untitled Branch)

Sharing the planet—the work of Isabelle du Toit (Rouaud)

Born in France, moving to South Africa at age 10, back to France at 12, then back to South Africa once again at 16, where she completed a university education before moving to the United States, living first in Chicago and now in Texas, ISABELLE DU TOIT (Rouaud) knows a lot about changing environments. She’s learned to look piercingly at the world around her, far beyond the surface details of her subjects’ surroundings, to the beating heart of their individuality.

Du Toit paints meticulous portraits of primarily birds and animals. She is an avid birdwatcher and has spent many hours in game parks observing nature, absorbing the interaction between man and his environment, and even countless more hours researching her subjects. Every feather, every nuance, color and texture matters and is an inseparable part of the whole. Although she began painting with acrylics, she now uses oils, preparing her canvases with repeated coats of white gesso, sanding between each application—much as Georgia O’Keefe did—to create a smooth, brilliant ground upon which to create her stunning pieces. The artist is deeply engaged with each of her paintings and it is hard to let them go when completed. Until recently she signed them “Rouaud,” her grandmother’s maiden name, in honor of her earliest role model.

It is by considered choice that duToit places her subjects against minimal manmade backgrounds rather than in their natural outdoor settings. This contrast of a living creature, portrayed with infinite detail, against a background of scarce distraction emphasizes its beauty and miraculous creation. For the artist, these are not merely reproductions of birds or animals; they deeply illustrate the plight of nature in the hands of an indifferent humanity. They give the viewer pause for thought, a quiet, contemplative space for considering how empty the world would be without diversity of life.

(Upper left, American Kestral, 24 x 30; right, detail from American Kestral)

More of Isabelle du Toit’s work can be seen at:

http://www.rouaud.net

http://www.klaudiamarrgallery.com in Santa Fe

-- Rosemary Carstens

http://www.CarstensCommunications.com