Curious Messenger Detail Collage
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
This piece, like so much of my work, is a collage of process.
Curious Messenger Detail Processes
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
Here is the juxtaposition of three processes in Curious Messenger.
Curious Messenger Detail Dyed Panel
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
Dyed Cherry Panel
Curious Messenger Detail Linen
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
Encaustic infused Linen
Curious Messenger Detail Encaustic
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
Pure pigment floating in a deep encaustic layer


Curious Messenger Detail Camera vs Projector
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
I was thinking of the work of a number of very cool other artists in making Curious Messenger

Lindsay Seers’ I Was A Camera, (Now I Am A Projector) describes her early life as a camera and how she has now transformed into a projector.

Curious Messenger Detail Transposed in Translation
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
I was thinking of the work of a number of very cool other artists in making Curious Messenger

Katie Patterson’s EarthMoonEarth translates Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata into Morse code, and then transmits the signals to be bounced off the moon and back again to play on an in-gallery piano.


Curious Messenger Detail Machine as Avatar
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
I was thinking of the work of a number of very cool other artists in making Curious Messenger

The movie Avatar


Curious Messenger Detail Earthrise
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
I was thinking of the work of a number of very cool other artists in making Curious Messenger

And that famous picture of earth from the moon taken by NASA in 1969



Curious Messenger Detail Autonomous Spacecraft
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
There are currently (2013) two unmanned spacecraft sending and receiving ongoing updates from Earth.


Curious Messenger Detail Mission Specific
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
They are mission specific machines sent to closely examine Mars (Curiosity) and Mercury (Messenger).

Curious Messenger Detail Into the Void
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
In the past, humans have sent unmanned craft called names like Voyageur, Viking and Explorer on trajectories that head out from their origins on earth and then on ever-outward into the void.


Curious Messenger Detail Singular Purposed
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Mahogany Panel
62x73 inches
Curiosity and Messenger, however, are singularly aimed at one destination and are singularly purposed as avatars for human sensory experience.


Curious Messenger - Current Incarnation - Mortality
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
Curiosity will die and sadly yes, the Messenger will be killed by the harsh environments of their destinations.
Curious Messenger - Current Incarnation - Not Ambassadors
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
They act, however, not as ambassadors, not as fly-by tourists, and not as questing explorers with important identities of their own.


Curious Messenger - Current Incarnation - Human Extentions
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
They act as equally important extensions of the human consciousness.
Curious Messenger - Current Incarnation - Aligned Componentry
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
Even the nature of their names has changed from that of individual agents to that of aligned componentry of the human project.


Curious Messenger - Current Incarnation - Not Cameras but Projectors
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
They act, not as cameras taking snapshots and postcards to send home, but as projectors sending human directed investigative activity out to these two planets.


Curious Messenger Morse Code and Moonlight Sonata
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
When we send and receive our coded messages to and from these avatars, will the vicarious experience that we gain from them be something like that roughly translated Morse code Moonlight Sonata?

Curious Messenger - How?
2014
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
So much for the Why? - what about the how?

The cherry wood panel was coloured with aniline dyes, and the splattered with water before the dye set. A final coat of finish wax seals the wood surface.
The heavily layered encaustic paint (beeswax, damar resin and microcrystalline-wax combined with pigment powders) applied directly to the wood.
Encaustic medium is soaked through the Linen and into the wood beneath effectively binding them together.


Curious Messenger - GradShow and girl
2013
Encaustic and Linen on Dyed Cherry wood Panel
62x73 inches
This is Curious Messenger in its first iteration.

It was permanently altered in 2014, after the fuss and hurry of the art school grad show was over.