November 13, 2009

After my last two gallery shows of abstract work in Puerto Vallarta and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I decided I wanted to go back to working figuratively in encaustic. I did a series of encaustic nudes a couple of years ago. They don't sell as well as my abstracts, but I love the figure and have been drawing and painting people since I was in third grade. I painted faces and figures of my beautiful Mexican neighbors and other women I have met in my travels here.

It is so much easier to paint figuratively in oil, but I have been using encaustic for ten years now and I am hooked. Besides, I have been giving encaustic workshops for years and I always want to push my boundaries. Its challenging to make faces in encaustic. I had to get back into my zone and stop overworking the paintings. I did a lot of scraping. The first portraits were 12" x 12" and are titled. "Keepers of Time."
The solo show entitled A Time of Witness is up until Nov. 29 at Galería 6 in Mineral de Pozos. Sales have been good and I am thrilled with the review:
"To speak about an art, which, by its very technique, values the power and vitality of a human being, is to speak about the artist's tendency to capture the phenomenology of details; phenomena that are naturally ephemeral: animal or human noises or sudden outbursts of energy that flutter in the artist’s vision. This is the driving force behind Ezshwan Winding's use of encaustic: the constant movement of shades and layers of color and the casual transformation of the wax act as agents of communication from a world which, in the fragility of its expressions, finds constant solidity... the expressions of the subjects, seen up close, hold the gaze of the spectator, who participates in a conversation of technique and mystery that envelops human forms, which seem to dissolve into abstraction...Winding seems to be suggesting a perceptible symmetry in the effect achieved by the colors. As if, by maintaining a communication with the work, we can detach ourselves and lose sense of the figure, leaving ourselves free to appreciate the color and texture that is absorbed in the painting. This is why her work is a map of life; every inter-connecting twist and turn, every color that comes and goes display an opposing flow, but at the same time end up coming together... Winding has become an interpreter of equilibrium... This is how, through the layers of encaustic, we see the artist's craft; her dedication and paradoxical brush strokes. The characters she paints lead dedicated lives, but lives that suffer the vagaries of chance. Winding, therefore, succeeds in presenting her subjects as testimonies of life; they are banners of the significance of time. There are no forced smiles or gazes veiled by some hidden lie. Her subjects become everyday people by showing their true selves and through the use of the encaustic technique. In other words, they hide what we all hide, but show what the artist reveals through her art – a cyclical and multi-dimensional transfiguration of forms to textures, to colors, to forms, to textures, to colors. Marcelo Leos, November 2009



The second show opened two weeks later. It is being shown at Galería Atelier in San Miguel and it is titled, Intimate Moments. All the work can be viewed on my website:www.ezshwan.com

After seven months of work. I am taking a short break from the studio.

Click on images to enlarge.