Kate Huser Santucci, encaustic painter
I’ve been admiring Kate’s encaustic paintings online (https://www.katehusersantucci.com/) for quite a while but only met her last summer. She works at Front Street, in the first floor of the 100 Building, where she shares space with Elisha Frontz.
“In college I started out as a theater major” Kate told me “and then switched to fine arts. My degree was in sculpture. Then I raised a family for 20 years.”
“About 10 years ago I saw an encaustic piece that I was really drawn to. Its layering gave it a sort of ethereal feel. About that same time a friend told me about an encaustic class being taught in St Joseph, Michigan. I decided to take the class and then just dove into encaustic work. I love the versatility of the medium, the way you can be sculptural or really painterly, the way you can scratch parts off or draw lines on and do all kinds of other things.”
“I have a show in the Dutoit Gallery next January and some of the pieces now in process will be for that show. I think it will have sort of a water theme. I’ll try to relate it to the water issues that are part of climate change. I’m also working on some sculpture pieces that may be part of the same show.
In the Dutoit show, my sculptures and a group of small water-related pieces will be interspersed with some large pieces, like this piece with the woman floating.
I wanted to make sure I understood Kate’s process so I selected one of her encaustic paintings and asked her to walk me through the steps required to make it.
“I started with a piece of scrap plywood” Kate told me. “I taped the edges and put on a layer of encaustic medium (a mixture of beeswax and tree resin). Then I added heat, so that the layer of encaustic medium will firmly grab onto the grain of the wood. Then I started painting a number of layers of encaustic paint, which is just encaustic medium with pigment added.”
“Every time I add a layer I heat it with a torch, so that it grabs onto the layers that have been applied. If I add a lot of heat the new layer is smooth. If I use less heat there is more of a texture. At any time, I could scrape off one or more layers in an area, so you can see more of what lies underneath.”
“I set this piece aside at one point because I wasn’t sure where I wanted the painting to go. Then Summer came and I just loved the look of flowers in my yard. I decided to add a flower image to this piece.”
“I used a photo as a reference and did the first layer using a smaller brush and encaustic paint. After that had been fused onto the piece I switched to oil paint with just enough wax in it to allow it to bind with the layers I already had. I started to paint the oil with my finger. If you look closely you can see that I’ve put in reds and oranges and golds and pinks. As a final step I add fine detail with a very small brush. I liked the result so much I did two more similar pieces”
studiophotos 