Sarah Beitler

Instead of documenting the Western Pennsylvanian countryside with photo realist representation, my encaustic wax-based landscape paintings come from my own interior perspectives as well as exterior vistas that I shoot with my digital camera. Traditional landscape artists strive to obtain a likeness to the particular place they are painting, I choose to focus on the luminous qualities of light present, and the irregular but natural marks that result from using a medium that is so hard to control. It may seem irrelevant to paint serenely lit uninhabited spaces in this age of urbanization and technological advancement; such spaces are becoming ever rarer and less relevant to the main culture except as nostalgic fantasies. These simple, tranquil landscapes can sometimes be discarded in today's fast-past, urban society as inconsequential or frivolous, but I hope to make the viewer contemplate the landscape as well as breathe a sigh of relief in their minimal, straightforward nature.

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