Sabine Simons

Walk into Sabine’s garage studio and in all the delicious creative chaos there is a productive coherence. Artists need a multitude of materials at hand for any ideas that will spring up. Sabine paints in both acrylics and encaustic hot waxes. In a perfect world both techniques would need their own studio but she consolidates her supplies and transforms her studio each time she switches over to her other skill.

a few peeks into her studio, acrylics, colourful encoustic waxes neatly stacked and a delightful gathering of her invented texture tools.

Sabine’s acrylic paintings are straight out of the ether. Abstracts that seems to be communicating from somewhere deep within and yet they are understandable. They are so compelling as they wander, muse and speak in their own timing.

She begins by choosing her pallet of maybe 3 or 4 colours to keep her image harmonious and simple, then she begins, sometimes with a quick reference to a composition and forms of a photograph but then she is on her own. She adds many layers, scraping, building up, stencilling and scribbling with various invented tools and lets the painting speak and evolve. She often works on 2 or 3 paintings at the same time, weaving the ideas and sensibilities together and letting one rest while working on another.

Sabine’s encaustic work is a whole other set up. She brings out her large hot pallet, special tools, brushes and bars of coloured waxes (shown above). Working with the hot wax is spontaneous, and very satisfying with a 3-dimensional quality about it. There are surprises and different paths to follow, some inspired by the imagination, some dictated by the materials.

Where these 2 techniques merge and blend is in their illusive and introspective quality. They are dream-like in that in between stage where your can almost remember your dream but not quite all of it as it slowly slips away. There is so much to see and see into in Sabine’s paintings. They seem to change and move right before my very eyes .

sabinesimons.com