JiJi Saunders

JiJi Saunders, a painter who uses the ancient medium of encaustic wax, is one of six artists commissioned to create new works for Vashon Allied Arts’ upcoming “Mad Hatter’s Ball” art auction.

For Saunders, finding her medium has been an artistic journey.

When the artist attended art school, she painted mostly in oil, drawing inspiration from the evocative works of American painter George Inness, English romantic landscape painter J.M.W. Turner and contemporary abstract artist Arthur Dove.

Always drawn to texture, she began incorporating burlap, leaves and straw into gesso and found it was too heavy for canvas. She decided that a new medium was in order.

Saunders took a class in encaustic wax and has been painting exclusively in the medium since 2002.

Relying solely on memory and feelings of a place, she starts with a thumbnail sketch, enlarges the image and then cuts it apart, laying fragments onto a wood panel. She brush paints image edges.

With color scheme in mind, she under paints with her signature glowing orange. Saunders melts encaustic paints onto a 200-degree heated, anodized steel palette and thins pigment with beeswax-resin medium that she mixes herself.

Using up to 40 transparent micro-layers, she builds deep textures and vibrant colors into the final piece. She carves into the wax layers with her collection of dental tools. Each layer is fused using an iron-like tool, an overhead shop light for larger pieces or a heat gun.

Saunders’ commissioned piece is untitled and depicts a lonely horizontal landscape, a thin blue river leading to a group of trees standing on the horizon, almost as in a mirage.

Saunders is currently represented by Seattle’s ArtForte Gallery and Lauryn Taylor Fine Art in Carmel, Calif., and Whidbey Island.