Connemara, Ireland, 2004
Encaustic on canvas
48 X 54 inches

At the beginning of his career, Tony Scherman was advised not to work with the encaustic process of mixing wax and pigment since ‘Jasper Johns was doing it’. In characteristically defiant style, he has worked almost exclusively in that medium ever since, creating grand, visceral experiences in heavily layered wax on canvas that have been described by Leah Ollman as ‘immediate and palpable, as in the witnessing of a cataclysmic force of nature, whose violent beauty at once seduces and dismays.’

His renderings of atomic mushroom clouds awe the viewer in their grandeur and stunning artificial beauty, while his landscapes bathe in a rare Turner-esque light coupled with a European palette taken from forest, earth, wind and sky. The sculptural quality of Scherman’s works, constructed layer by layer, reflect a considered eye that is deeply involved in process, perhaps an attempt to derive meaning from the passing of time. Dust, hair and other organic matter trapped within the work suggest the reality of the painters’ sophisticated, passionate technique.

From the catalogue text for Pensees Impensables (Unthinkable Thoughts), by Ihor Holubizky:

‘(Scherman) engages the cultural and intellectual property of history and mythology…(He) does not over-intellectualize his subject matter, but is conversant with philosophical theory…Scherman extracts attendant cultural scar tissues and mythologies that form over time.’