I love to create; I always have. My medium has changed over the past 30 years but my passion for the artistic process continues. In my studio my latest mediums are Cold Wax Mixed Media and Encaustic. I love allowing each piece to unfold and emerge. The paint, the wax, the tools all give me a feeling of being both the artist and the art itself. I love the smell of beeswax and the feeling of the wax on my hands, resting under my finger nails. Through the process of encaustic what emerges is often unpredictable. Each piece I have created with purpose and yet the magic of the medium has lead me to these final images. There's always a sense of surprise and wonder. I am creating happy accidents when things develop differently than I had expected... and that's the magic.
As a self-thought artist, Lynn Harnish started her artistic journey on the prairies in central Canada. Focusing on Interior Design which spanned 25 years of her career, Lynn and her family moved to Vancouver Island in mid 1990’s, where she eventually fulfilled her dream of painting full time. In its pursuit, Lynn discovered encaustic painting and fell in love with this medium. Her beautiful, contemporary abstract works of art are evocative of far-away mystical places as much as the coastlines and forests closer to home. Characterized by a subtle, dreamy palette and remarkable depth achieved through the application of numerous (sometimes 30 or more) layers of pigmented molten wax and burnt shellac on wooden substrate, the luminous gems that emerge are a showcase of the artist’s keen understanding of this ancient medium and her willingness to embrace and capitalize on its inherent unpredictability through the process that is as labour intensive and precise as it is meditative and intuitive. Lynn introduces a sculptural dimension to some of her encaustic paintings through creating complementing pieces or clay and fastening them with wire for a highly decorative, modern and yet elemental and organic effect.
The result of Lynn’s natural progression towards the use of cold wax and oil paints, is her brand new body of work, encompassing small to medium sized mixed media paintings presented behind glass with crisp mating and contemporary black frame.
Expressed through saturated palette, bold shapes, interlaced layers and marks that reveal what lies beneath, these striking paintings present as the perfect amalgam of minimalism and exuberance.
