In window: Cielo (Uttar 248), encaustic on panel, 48 x 48", 2004
Joanne Mattera wrote the book on encaustic, that method of painting with translucent layers of wax. It’s called "The Art of Encaustic Painting." Mattera, who has a show up at Arden Gallery, revels in the medium’s stained-glass-like luminosity. She’s a colorist whose principle concern is how tones interact and play off one another, the vibrations they create, and the retinal zing they set off.
The risk with work so visually jazzy is that it’s all eye candy and no substance. Mattera overcomes this possibility by setting her wild colors in simple, Modernist formations: grids made up of blocks or series of stacked bands. The artist takes her palette from the paintings of Mughal India and Renaissance Siena. "Cielo (Uttar 248)" is a 4-by-4-foot piece featuring three columns of horizontal bands, all against a lush, foggy-blue ground. Most of the bands are blue as well, but through that deep tone buzz more surface colors: pink, red, lime green.
The structure of these works is by no means minimalist. The encaustic seeps and drips, the tones pulse, the many layers wink out at you and then dissolve. "Uttar 133" sets a series of red and gold blocks in a grid against a buttery yellow ground, and here Mattera demonstrates the possibilities of encaustic and the different veils and surfaces it can create: dappled orange beneath a sheet of white, then dotted with orange on top, very waxy; or rough and scored, like a rock; or nearly liquid, smearing like red wine.
Throughout there’s a sense…that light is powering these works, shining through them. In the darkest days of the year, it’s the perfect exhibition to warm up to — like spending an afternoon at the beach in July, only you don’t have to wear sunscreen.