Hot Wax Artist Cools Off at the 17th Annual Shadyside Art Festival

PITTSBURGH - Aug. 6, 2014 - PRLog -- Some like it hot, and none more so than Victoria Primicias, an artist who paints with beeswax and a blow torch. Encaustics, also known as hot wax painting, is from the Greek enkaustikos, meaning “to burn in.” Primicias will be a first-time exhibitor at the upcoming 17^th Annual Shadyside Art Festival on Walnut St. on Aug. 23–24, 2014.

Born in the tropics, Primicias sported goosebumps for years after her family emigrated to Toronto in the late ’70s, then suffered frostbite in Chicago where she later worked. Now happily ensconced in North Carolina, she’s careful not to burn down the house when she wields her blow torch while fusing colored beeswax onto a wooden canvas.

To cool off, Primicias says, “I like to paint nothing – vast expanses of sky and water – visual resting places animated with subtle color variations and textures.” You can blame this on her graphic design career when she received many awards for designing brochures and annual reports full of what she calls “negative space.” “Really, it’s nothing,” she claims, and not as easy as it sounds.

In the end, her work is full of something. Elegance, subtlety, sophistication. There’s also a sense of mystery, perhaps hidden in the 6–20 luminous layers of beeswax. For this, she thanks the Romans and Greeks who used waxy layers 4,000 years ago to caulk the hulls of ships before it evolved into an art form. Today in Egypt, 600 encaustic portraits created between 100–300 A.D. survive.

About Victoria Primicias | ARTECERA Fine Art: 
Victoria Angelique Primicias is a 25-year graphic design veteran whose work has been recognized in publications such as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Communication Arts magazine and Print magazine. Today, she is an encaustic artist based in Wake Forest, NC who exhibits in art galleries and shows across the country. Artecera is Latin for “wax art.” See more at http://www.arte-cera.com