SHAWNA MOORE attended the schools of Fine Arts and Architecture in Eugene, Oregon. An established, professional painter, MOORE exhibits nationally in many galleries, has been the recipient of many awards. MOORE continually dedicates her talents through workshops to support the arts in many communities.

MOORE works with the ancient method of encaustic painting. This technique incorporates pigmented bee’s wax, which is heated, re-worked, etched, or scuffed to achieve a dimensional depth. As each layer cools, another can be applied, resulting in a radiant and complex terrain of light, color and texture.

Often working up to 20-40 layers of wax on each painting MOORE uses tools to physically alter each layer. While a painting is lying flat on a table MOORE dances on top of it drawing, dragging, gouging, rubbing, dripping, throwing, dropping, adding, removing, ironing, fusing, and buffing the wax. Layers of marks cover the surface, some half erased, as in an ancient manuscript.

Script, or in MOORE’S words “a personal sutra” is compressed between layers of melted wax, none of the text quite legible. Amid all manner of floating associations a days worth of thoughts and activities are encapsulated in the wax. In each painting a sense of time passing is conveyed. Connected with this fluidity and swirling energy, you drift along listening to the murmuring of numerous voices.