Three Domestic Madonnas

These are 3 very small encaustic collages in a series called Domestic Madonnas. Each one is 5.25 X 7 inches on wood (2010).  The source images are from a catalog of early Flemish and Italian painters from the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts. It was in the $1. bin at the Salvation Army Book Shop in downtown Eugene. The Flemish school makes me swoon.

As for the Madonna designation: I have described her very inclusively in the series. In fact, she is motherhood in all its domestic beatitude. The history of art is brimming with hundreds of images of Madonna and child: severe, luminous, and always somewhat downcast. She symbolizes both submission and fortitude. On the contrary, the Domestic Madonnas reflect playfulness, irony, boredom and other quotidian realities of motherhood. I mean, wasn’t  Mary the mother of a teenager, too?

About the encaustic medium: my friend Sarah Grew is an artist who works a lot with encaustic. I took a workshop with Sarah last summer and have been integrating wax into some of my collage work. I’ll post more examples of these projects next.

I am a librarian and artist living in Eugene, Oregon — where it is often damp and always green.