Wax. It’s a word that you want to touch. It calls to mind different things in different contexts – the car guy who spends the weekend lovingly waxing his car; a room with scented candles, the height of romance; or a painful hair removal option that reveals sexy smooth skin. Still, it’s a word with a texture, a scent, a vibe all its own. And when heated up and mixed with pigments, it becomes an artistic medium as old as the pharaohs, yet new enough to be called a trend – encaustics.
The ancient Egyptians applied encaustic portraits called fayum to mummy cases. In ancient Greece, paint and wax were mixed together to both caulk holes in ships and to decorate them. The practice became less common over time, with a spike in interest as discoveries about the ancient world revealed the fayum portraits in the nineteenth century. But again, interest waned until the 1950s and 60s when American artists rediscovered it, the most famous of whom, Jasper Johns, used pigmented wax to create seminal works, such as “Flag” (1954), “Target with Four Faces” (1955), and “Map” (1961). Now again, encaustics are all the rage.
“You could say it’s an up-and-coming medium, although it’s been around for over 2,000 years,” laughs Cherie Mittenthal, director of the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill and an artist herself.

At least part of this resurgence is due to the release of artist Joanne Mattera’s book The Art of Encaustic Painting in 2001, according to Mittenthal, which brought the work of varied artists working with wax to the attention of both art lovers and other artists, and also advised on practical issues for working in the medium.
Mattera herself contends that along with her book, the advances in Internet technology in the early 2000s, a passionate marketing campaign by encaustics paintmakers R&F Paints, and an exhibition in New Jersey all came together to push encaustics out of the obscure and into the limelight.
“There was a fabulous show at the Montclair Art Museum in 1998 called Encaustic Art in America, curated by Gail Stavitsky... and it was an extraordinary show and we all got to meet each other for the first time,” Materra explains. “It was a confluence of things –  a paintmaker vigorously promoting and sharing information, that exhibition, the Internet, and my book all kind of happened around the same time. So people could find one another, find information, and get the materials more easily. And then, this thing has just more than snowballed, it’s wax-balled!”
Encaustic is a process-oriented medium. To hear artists who work in this medium speak of it, there is a palpable enthusiasm and love for wax that is contagious. They speak of the multisensory experience with an almost spiritual tone, full of awe and passion; they revel in the ritual of preparing their materials.
“I love the materiality of it, the stuffness of it,” Materra enthuses. “And the way it is luminous when pigment is put into wax.”
But, the way wax is used in art is much more varied than you might imagine at first. Frequently, “encaustic painting” brings to mind a muted palette, an impressionistic approach, and a somewhat moody result. But this is not necessarily inherent to the medium. Artists like William Thomson and Peter Roux certainly do offer some encaustic work that fits into that category, for example. But then there are works by Dale Denby, Nancy Natale, and Materra that feature bold color and a vibrancy that challenges those expectations.
Then there is the multitude of ways in which wax is used. One technique, for example, is to use it to paint over another material. Many forego the traditional canvas for a base with more character, like wood. Some paint the hot wax over photographs or newspapers, giving their work an intriguing quality, moving it one step deeper than the initial tactile appeal. And in fact, many of the best works feature layer upon layer of rich, luminous wax mixed with collage to create something very different from the fleshy portraits of the ancients.
“It’s a very versatile, exciting medium and you can do a lot with it,” Mittenthal explains.  As proof, she cites the work of  a number of artists using wax in different ways, such as Gregory Wright, who works with patterned effects; Deanna Wood, who uses stencils and masks; and Elena de la Ville, who incorporates photos into her encaustics and works with the idea of narrative in wax. 
This year, the 5th International Encaustic Conference comes to Provincetown, after outgrowing its space at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, where it was launched. The conference, which Materra started and is now co-presenting with Castle Hill, brings encaustic enthusiasts together for networking, workshops, talks, and sharing. There is also a post-conference series of workshops at Castle Hill, one of the few area institutions that has invested in teaching encaustic on a regular basis.
In town, exhibitions featuring wax are popping up everywhere, with the results of an encaustic competition featured at Bowersock Gallery, a wax invitational at Kobalt Gallery, and a special exhibition co-curated by Materra with Marla Rice at the Rice/Polak Gallery, featuring work that is “surface-oriented,” including some non-encaustic paintings, as well.
For Materra, it isn’t so crucial that encaustics get lumped together.  In fact, she warns we shouldn’t refer to artists working with wax as “encaustic artists” any more than we would refer to a sculptor who works in marble as a “marble artist”; it’s about the work.
“I love color in general – saturated color, and wax gives that to me best,” she explains. “But I would encourage all artists to work in more mediums – get fluent with this whole range of things. That’s one of the great beauties for any of us working in any medium, because the moment we bring other elements into the medium, whatever we were doing becomes richer.”
While collectors and galleries are now understanding more and more about encaustics and accepting more and more of the work, there is also the danger that it might become too trendy – ending up almost gimmicky for those who don’t truly love the medium.
Steve Bowersock of the Bowersock Gallery in Provincetown says, “It’s a fascinating medium. A lot of it is still so far ahead of itself... People are still figuring out how to make it their own.”
Materra says she can see how there might be a bandwagon effect happening with encaustics now, and it is a concern.
“I like to say my middle name is ‘I am not an encaustic artist,’ because I think that those artists who identify themselves as ‘encaustic artists,’ as opposed to regular old artists who happen to be using encaustics, are promoting themselves in a way that could be perceived as gimmicky.”
Then again, she is quick to point out that such criteria is not applied to artists in more traditional media, like oil paint.
“Encaustic is on the cusp of mainstream. We will know it is truly mainstream when no one bats an eye when you bring in an encaustic painting and it is just considered a painting.”
The Fifth International Encaustic Conference runs from June 3 - 5 at the Provincetown Inn, 1 Commercial St. Registration is required for most events. Post-conference encaustics workshops and related events happen June 6 - 10 at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, 10 Meetinghouse Rd., Truro. For registration and information, call Castle Hill at 508.349.7511 or visit www.castlehill.org. Additional encaustic exhibitions are taking place a severalt Provincetown galleries, including: Kobalt Gallery (366 Commercial St.); Rice/Polak (430  Commercial St.); Bowersock Gallery (373 Commercial St.); and 397 Ernden Gallery (397 Commercial St.). Check our Stroll listings for show details.