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Unexpected Furtherance

PAINTING IN ENCAUSTIC WAS A TECHNIQUE AMANDA DURANT WANTED TO TRY even as a student. In her art exhibit at St. Paul & St. Jamess, she used the technique -- applying molten pigmented wax to plywood panels -- to "branch out from previous paintings" (oils, painted from observation). In the process, she also searched out "unexpected ways in which we find God."

The results of Amanda's explorations were seen in an exhibit, entitled Unexpected Furtherance, which ran November 16 - 23 at St. Paul & St. James. The title of the show came from an observation of Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness."

Encaustic painting is one of the world's earliest painting techniques. The ancient Greeks used heated wax to caulk their vessels. At some point they added pigment to the wax and used it to decorate ships and household items. Homer sang of "painted warships" as early as 800 BC.

The Greek technique was influential, as can be discerned in the Fayum mummy portraits in Greco-Roman Egypt, 100 BC - 200 AD. These encaustic mummy portraits were set into mummy cases designed to transport bodies to the afterlife.

"Some qualities in the technique are helping me explore new modes of painting," Amanda said. Like God, the "images [in her work] are elusive, and I do fall back on Christian imagery: sheep and birds and human forms as symbolic images." One sees also allusions to her experiences at St. Paul & St. James, where she serves as Coordinator of Loaves and Fishes, which may be the largest food distribution center in Connecticut.

Amanda and her husband moved to New Haven in August 2002 from Williamstown, Massachusetts. Her work has been shown locally at the Creative Arts Workshop and during Citywide Open Studio tours.

The works in the St. Paul & St. James show were offered for sale.