Emily Ebbs - Beeswax Painting

Artwork Description:

This work is created entirely from pure beeswax, filling the frame without the use of traditional canvas. Muslin fabric has been carefully embedded into the wax while it was still warm, creating subtle shifts in texture and tone that evoke the qualities of an abstract painting. The surface carries a quiet depth—soft, organic, and tactile—inviting close, intimate viewing. Pencil shavings are scattered across and partially set into the wax, mimicking the impulsive mark-making often associated with paint. These delicate fragments introduce a sense of movement and spontaneity, contrasting with the stillness and solidity of the wax. The work explores ideas of preservation, memory, and material transformation, using modest, everyday elements to gesture toward the act of painting without ever applying paint itself.

Artist Statement:

Recently, my practice has been incorporating the landscape as a quiet collaborator. Stepping out of the studio and into different environments, I gather natural materials—such as eucalyptus leaves— to create dyes. This process allows me to engage directly with the land, using its offerings to fuel my staining techniques. The act of boiling the leaves fills the studio with their scent, evoking a deeply sensory and bodily response. Through this intimate exchange, the landscape has become more than just a backdrop or subject—it has emerged as a tool for healing and transformation Rather than painting the landscape in a traditional plein air manner, I immerse myself within it. I don’t see the landscape as a subject to be captured or dominated—as it often was within the frameworks of modernity—but as a living system I am entangled with. My practice is shaped by posthumanist thought, which challenges the human-nature binary and calls for a reconfiguration of our relationship with the more-than-human world.