Brain Fog

Encaustic painting - "Brain Fog"

The image is based on a potential 'menopausal' moment earlier in the year ( the doctor says that's not peri-menopausal, that's just getting old).

I couldn't find some photocopied sheets of paper, I lost them in an interval of about 5 to 10 minutes, over a space of about 1x 1.5 x3m). I searched high and low, across shelves and table surfaces, I had almost convinced myself that I must have dropped them in town. Eventually I found them right in front on me on the shelf. No matter how I had searched across the field of view in front of me, where they were felt like, in the image, a blank spot in my vision.

The bookshelf in the image is alot more cluttered than the actual one, but I like the way each shelf can represent an aspect of a persons life. The buildings the obscure electrical equipment and paraphernalia -Totoro: all lie about in front of and tucked in amongst a series of books. The books, our regimented knowledge, gets filled in with the trappings of daily life

The limited palette is because when looking for things, I don't think we can cope with too much, we pick up on a few highlighted colours at a time and the rest may just as well be black and white.

The original plan was to depict the brain fog blank, as just the image over-melted and so, removed to the underlying blank surface. In the end however I preferred the affect of the thick white opaque wax melted on to the top, covering the underlying items. Its not missing, its obscured.