San Miguel Recalled

Home again, full of memories and picking up the threads of the life I left behind. Pictured above is one of the handful of encaustics I completed in Ezshwan's class.

She was a very good teacher and demonstrated approaches I hadn't tried before but I found myself settling into my familiar groove in the classroom. 

It was so informative to work in a different studio and with someone else's equipment. It shakes things up.

Three weeks after I thought the above piece was finished I decided to rework parts of it without access to a torch or tools. I struck matches which I held on the surface and sat the piece in the sun to change the wax. That was really fun; making do with what I had on hand. I even got my hair dryer into the action.

Here Ezshwan demonstrates the hot pen. You can lift up blobs of wax and draw with the tip. 

And above is one of Ezshwan's paintings done with that tool.  In the background you can see the first demo piece with a little more added to it.

And this is another piece I did during class - nothing to write home about but it was fun.

John did a lot of cooking.

This last photo shows the tamales our housekeeper prepared for us from a cookbook John purchased. The tamales were made from corn slaked with lime, cooked into tortillas, those tortillas were soaked in cream until they disintegrated and then filled with ground peanuts and cinnamon, lightly sweetened. They were really wonderful.

Now I have to get to work to prepare packets of goodies for my Malibu class in a couple of weeks (see sidebar). I'll be scarce at responding to comments but please know that I read them and love hearing your thoughts. It's going to take awhile for me to get on track here. xo