Encaustic Painting

Encaustic painting is a technique in which pigment is mixed with heated beeswax and a hardening resin, then applied to a surface, most often wood panel, and fused into place with additional heat, traditionally from a heated metal tool passed over the surface. The technique dates to ancient Greece, where it was reportedly used for large-scale painting now entirely lost, and its best-preserved surviving body of work is the Fayum mummy portraits from Roman Egypt, whose painted faces have retained remarkably vivid color for roughly two thousand years due to the durability of the wax medium. Encaustic fell out of common use after antiquity but was revived by artists from the twentieth century onward, including Jasper Johns, drawn to the technique's rich texture, translucency and the way its wax surface can be reworked, layered, or carved into even after cooling.