Encaustic

Encaustic paintings are made from molten beeswax and damar resin (a crystallized sap that derives from fir trees). The word "encaustic" comes from the Greek word enkaustikos, meaning to "burn in". Encaustic art is one of the most durable of mediums and dates back to the Egyptian Fayum mummy portraits (c 100-300 CE); Greeks and Romans used encaustic on sculpture and panels in the 5th-7th centuries.

Shary enjoys combining this ancient medium with modern materials such as fabric, spunbonded fibres such as Lutradur and Tyvek, plaster, wood, paper, photographs and collage ephemerae. She colours her work with pigmented waxes and oil sticks, fusing these to the molten wax to produce highly textured and sweet-smelling works of art that are rich with depth and sensual tactility.

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