I am Sarah Petite, Canadian painter. I work out of studios in Fredericton, New Brunswick (winter), and southwest Nova Scotia (summer).
Encaustic paint has been my constant, and solo, companion for thirty years. I paint in saturated, beeswax-based colours on plywood panels, which, as you will see, have been cut out into curious shapes in my most recent projects.
Steeplechase, encaustic on wood, 2012
As an abstractionist, I circle around this headstrong medium and let it instruct me as I go. Encaustic has unique gifts and demands; it behaves and performs in ways unknown to other paint mediums. In large part, my paintings are about encaustic paint.
Where other paints are wet-then-dry, encaustic is hot-then-cool, but ah - with a heat gun you can take it back to 'wet' and work it again and again. Brush on, scrape off, score, fill, scrape, trowel, hatch, layer, add and subtract - the techniques are endless!
Please enjoy a look at my work, which is arranged around a chronological narrative.