In the Header: Joanne Mattera

Four Silk Road paintings photographed in the studio

Clockwise from top left: Silk Road 404, Silk Road 401, both 2018; Silk Road 353, 2017; Silk Road 402, 2018; all encaustic on panel, 18 x 18 inches

I don't normally feature my own work in ProWax Journal, feeling that it's unseemly for the editor to be too present visually. But after many issues of the publication, I felt I could break my own rule.

My kind of painting is chromatically juicy and compositionally reductive. I refer to it only partly tongue in cheek as lush minimalism. Each painting in the ongoing Silk Road series is a small color field. The series, which I began in 2005, was inspired by the mutable hues of iridescent silk, hence the title, but quickly evolved into a more expansive exploration of color. More than a decade and over 400 small paintings later, I am still engaged. In the newest paintings geometry participates in the process. A textural scrim of complementary or related hues overlays a bisected color field. That horizontal is not a divider so much as a means of bringing color together in chromatic conversation.

These four paintings, and the work of 23 other ProWax members will be on view in the second incarnation of Organic to Geometric: Investigations in Structure and Surface, curated by Carol Pelletier, at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, May 25-June 24. An opening is timed to coincide with the Friday evening art stroll during the 12th International Encaustic Conference. A catalog will be available for purchase, readable online at no charge. You'll find more about the exhibition in the Exhibitions listing and on the Sidebar under Member Exhibitions.

You can see more of my work on my website. 

A 56-page book, Silk Road: Excerpts From an Ongoing Series, was published in 2015 by Well-Fed Artist Press to mark 10 years of my involvement with this work and reissued in this second edition the 
following year. You can view it online 
at no charge.