Sara Crisp embeds found organic objects such as starfish, butterfly wings and fossils into the wax surfaces of her paintings. They have often been compared to medieval reliquaries, fossilized amber, and naturalist’s journals. Although the placement of the component objects is carefully planned, she comes across these artifacts by chance. This duality between control and spontaneity is prominent in her work. The result is visually seductive and symbolically suggestive, balancing scientific objectivity and romantic subjectivity. Her work comes across as precise, even clinical, at times, their surfaces scored and traversed by carefully measured lines and geometric forms. Carefully fashioned, polygonal sections of mica, a transparent mineral, cover the center of each painting.
In addition to celebrating the process involved in creating an object, Crisp’s art...
Category
Early 2000s Abstract Art by Medium: Encaustic
MaterialsMixed Media, Encaustic