Fire is both destruction and creation.
That paradox lives at the core of my art — and encaustic, an ancient painting technique using melted wax, lets me channel that contradiction with brutal honesty.
I don’t use encaustic because it’s fashionable. I use it because it burns. Because it melts. Because it transforms. Every time I light the flame, I’m not just painting — I’m confronting something: a memory, a fear, a truth I can’t put into words.
In encaustic, nothing is fixed. Layers shift. Surfaces crack. Mistakes become part of the story. That’s what makes it perfect for what I do: turning resilience, trauma, and spiritual tension into physical form. It’s not clean. It’s not polished. But it’s alive — and that matters more than perfection.
My works are often loaded with recycled materials, soil, dirt, plastic, cyanotype, ferrofluid — elements that echo both fragility and survival. But encaustic is the one that holds them together. Literally. It seals the chaos without erasing it.
There’s something sacred about painting with heat.
It demands presence. It doesn’t forgive hesitation. Just like life, just like the moments that shape us. In encaustic, as in healing, you don’t get to undo. You can only move forward, layer by layer.
This is why I paint with fire.
Because sometimes the only way out is through.
And sometimes, survival leaves marks that deserve to be seen.