18th International Encaustic Conference

Isabelle Gaborit  is a contemporary artist, though her preferred medium of encaustic is ancient. She graduated in 2006 with an honors degree in fine arts in Ireland. Since then, she has been exhibiting work extensively nationally and internationally in, among others, The United States, Northern Ireland, China and France.  Her creative process goes hand in hand with her daily sketching practice where she explores mark-making and gesture, as she absorbs her experience of her surroundings and visual memory of place: forms, colours, textures and patterns. This experience is transmuted into her paintings, not in an overtly conscious way, but as a result of the embodiment of her experiences in her hand and body. Isabelle is particularly interested in the geological processes built up in layers over time, that the harsh weather is slowly breaking down and revealing. Her art process echoes those geological processes. Like the natural forces that shape the landscape, each painting goes through numerous stages of construction, destruction, growth, and decay. As the paintings go through the physicality of what could be akin to an archaeological process, layers of pigmented beeswax are built up, scraped back while cooled, scored, and shaped, creating highly tactile surfaces.