Hope Banks Art Studio
"Art touches my heart and soul. I want to touch it back." -HB
Since I was young, I could never get close enough to an art piece in a gallery to see the brush strokes and colors the way I wanted. The authoritative voices said, "Don't touch it" or "Stand Back". I wanted my children and my grandchildren to experience art they could examine and even touch without hesitation. The ancient art of encaustics lends itself to depth and feeling that I have yet to find in any other medium.
Encaustic painting is a form of painting that involves a heated wax medium that is a mixture of beeswax and damar resin. Colored pigments are then added. The molten mix is applied to a surface—usually prepared wood. The word encaustic originates from Ancient Greece and means "to burn in". It is an ancient art form and the oldest surviving encaustic panel paintings are the Romano-Egyptian Fayum mummy portraits from Egypt, around 100–300 AD. The one pictured here is a 6th-century encaustic icon from Saint Catherine's Monastery, Egypt.
