What the Heat Leaves: Fortitude, Perseverance, and the Work Still Becoming

Some bodies of work arrive gently.This one did not.

What the Heat Leaves is a series shaped by fortitude and perseverance—by the kind of growth that is forged through difficult conditions rather than softened by them. It asks what survives sustained pressure, what refuses to burn away, and how what remains continues to become something stronger, more resolved, and more present.

This work is not about recovery as an endpoint. It is about formation.

Heat as a Condition, Not a Metaphor

Encaustic is a medium that insists on commitment. Wax, pigment, and heat demand time, repetition, and endurance. Layers are built slowly, reheated, scraped back, and reworked. Nothing is ever fully erased. Earlier decisions remain embedded in the surface, shaping everything that follows.

In this series, orange underpainting functions as a site of ignition—visible even when partially concealed. Deep Prussian blue layers act as containment rather than background, compressing the surface and holding tension. Heat is not merely a tool; it is a condition that alters, records, and insists.

The paintings carry evidence of what they have passed through. They do not aim for polish or ease. They hold weight.

Florals as Assertions of Strength

While floral forms—particularly peonies—appear throughout the work, they are not treated as decorative subjects. Instead, they function as structural forms shaped by pressure. They are pushed forward and pulled back through abstraction, layered until they feel held rather than displayed.

This is work about growth that occurs because of difficulty, not in spite of it. The florals in What the Heat Leaves do not soften under pressure. They persist. They assert. They remain.

Abstraction allows the work to move beyond representation and toward experience—where color, gesture, and accumulation carry memory, endurance, and resolve.

From Surface to Space

This body of work began as a series of paintings, but it has always pointed beyond the wall. As the series develops, I am actively exploring ways to extend these ideas into three-dimensional and installation-based forms—where wax, structure, and spatial relationships can further examine containment, pressure, and perseverance.

I recently wrote a grant to support this expansion, outlining a path from two-dimensional encaustic paintings into sculptural and installation work. That proposal reflects the natural evolution of the series and the desire to explore material endurance across scale and form.

But grant or not, this work continues.

The drive to move this series forward—to test materials, to take risks, to allow the work to occupy space—is not contingent on funding. It is intrinsic to the project itself. The grant represents support, not permission.

What Remains, What Becomes

At its core, What the Heat Leaves is about fortitude. It is about perseverance through conditions that do not resolve quickly. It is about how sustained pressure forges growth—how what survives emerges altered, strengthened, and still becoming.

This work is not interested in ease or arrival. It is interested in endurance. In what holds. In what refuses to disappear. In how difficulty shapes form over time.

As this series continues to unfold—through paintings, objects, and future installations—it remains rooted in that central question:

What does the heat leave behind?