E L I S E W A G N E R

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MAPPING BUOYANCY 1-4
blot print, beeswax and oil on panel 20” x 16”

Hello! I’m just landing back into my life after an extended and very nourishing trip to New York, an odyssey really! Already, I’m heading north for the opening of Intersections this Saturday. I’ve been showing in Seattle since 2011, and I’m excited to share my first solo exhibition at Lost In Composition Gallery (@lostincomposition). I’ll be there from 1–3 pm and would love to see you.

These four Mapping Buoyancy paintings at the center of the exhibition began while I was working on Finding Buoyancy, my September exhibition at Imogen Gallery in Astoria. Each are 20” x 16”. I made them using two ancient, analog processes, printmaking and encaustic. Over time, I’d collected fragments and castoffs in the studio from prints I had blotted with tissue paper I’d made using images of particles colliding in a bubble chamber. Over time, I collected the blot print cast offs from the press to use as collage materials to incorporate into new compositions, and layered beeswax and oil over them. Some of the printed marks are still visible, while others almost disappear into the surface.

This is where the ancient and the contemporary meet for me. Scientific instruments make movements we could never see with the naked eye visible. Printmaking and encaustic let me work with those images by hand. The past becomes part of the present quite literally. Pieces of earlier prints are still there, carrying marks from the work they came from and taking on new meaning alongside the marks I make now.

The buoy first took shape in my work through those particle images. Now I see a buoy every day from my studio window over the Columbia River. I keep coming back to the way it moves with the current while staying anchored. It helps us find our bearings on the river, and it’s become a way for me to think about finding my own through change.

Intersections
Lost In Composition Gallery
908 Alaskan Way Suite B Seattle
Saturday, November 7 · I’ll be there from 1–3 pm

#mappingbuoyancy
#printmaking
#myprocess
#seattleart
#elisewagnerstudio