‘Preserve’ Opens at 13FOREST Gallery Thursday

Preserve is an exhibition of new and recent work by Taleen Batalian, Anne Cavanaugh and Tracy Spadafora. Focusing on nature, the exhibition presents three different approaches to defining and interpreting the world through one of the oldest of all art forms – wax-based encaustic. First developed in ancient Egypt, encaustic has recently regained popularity among artists. The three women taking part in Preserve are generally recognized as being among the few of its masters in the Boston area.

Encaustic, strictly defined, is a form of painting in which artists set layers of pigment and beeswax onto a surface with heat. Over time the layers form a final composition that is visually nuanced. Batalian, Cavanaugh and Spadafora expand upon that definition by adding carved images and small objects into each layer of wax.

Tracy Spadafora believes modern development has led many people to view nature as a series of defined but unconnected objects and events. In her most recent encaustics, Spadafora poetically conveys this idea by contrasting visible forms in nature with current scientific definitions of what the forms are. In her piece titled Cultivate, for instance, a row of beautiful orange carrots stand alone in test tubes before rows of DNA sequencing that, to some people, define all there is to know about any object in nature. Spadafora challenges the viewer to wonder if definitions of the world reveal any greater truth than direct experience of it. An answer does not come easily.

Taleen Batalian sets out to resolve the conflict between experience and rationality. Her work in Preserve includes images of light fixtures that can be read as odd replacements for stars or as tangible reference points in otherwise nonrepresentational compositions. In Red Bird 2, Batalian presents a soft, wintry background of light blue and orange wax. Closer to the surface a cardinal, perching on a branch scratched into the wax, peacefully coexists with a group of artificial lights dangling in front of it. Here nature is the sum of everything – including human expression – and it can make sense if we accept it as such. Batalian points to a path to discovery but leaves the journey up to the viewer.

Anne Cavanaugh presents a world that is symbolically familiar to artists and scientists, a world that is stable when its features harmonize with one another. In Preserve, Cavanaugh embeds into each layer of her encaustics items as common as leaves and flower seeds to create complex, symmetrical patterns. In effect, materials used in pieces such as Inkberry overtly refer to nature, but their visual harmony suggests something deeper. There is an underlying, permanent order to the world as Cavanaugh understands it. Again, she is an artist that does not set out to explain that order; instead she instructs us to observe the world and with reason and poetry find what is invisible.

– Information from 13forest.com