View Stephanie's work at stephaniehargrave.com

Hargrave’s encaustic work strives to combine biology and botany with imagery that isn’t overt per se but feels ultimately familiar.  Her paintings incorporate a tendency to abstract organic forms, and in doing so, emphasize the direct correlation between subject matter and materials, as beeswax, resin and pigments are heated, layered and fused with a torch.  By applying hundreds of thin layers, she can attain the transparency and luminosity that is possible with wax.  She carves into the surfaces with pottery tools and dental instruments, exploring varying line weights in the process.  She often burnishes and layers in pencil or charcoal drawings on tissue paper.  More recently, she is using powdered graphite to achieve desired details, and has been applying encaustic to hand formed porcelain structures which are later combined using steel wire and crocheted cotton string, yarn and Icelandic wool.    

Bio

Hargrave has been painting and working in clay since college, where she studied color theory, ceramics, sculpture, drawing and painting.  She has shown her work in Seattle, Minneapolis, San Luis Obispo, Santa Fe, New York and Atlanta and it lives in several corporate collections.  She has participated in two artist residencies in Brooklyn this year, and continues to study with Michael David in his year- long program as she prepares for a show at M. David & Co. Gallery scheduled for 2020.  Encaustic has been her focus for the last 19 years.  It is the one medium that affords all the other materials she has worked in to overlap and inform one another.