Artist : Susan Wickstrand Born in Chicago, and raised in La Jolla, California, artist Susan Wickstrand graduated from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Susan acknowledges her roots in traditional Romantic subject matter by creating landscapes that are often moody and mysterious, and are at once familiar, yet somehow distant and inaccessible. Light plays a primary role in portraying the emotional content and character of her work, and this focus on the effects of light is further emphasized by her addition of a layer of translucent beeswax to the surface of many of her paintings and most of her collages. A brief description of this unique wax process ensues: Encaustic painting is a technique developed in ancient Greece, and can refer to any process that incorporates the use of wax manipulated through heat. Beeswax is the oldest known pigment binder. The Greek word, “Encaustika” literally means “burning in”. Typically, in this process, pig