LEARNING new words is fun.

   At the Ruth Morpeth Gallery in Hopewell, an exhibit on two artists who work in encaustic, on view through April 15, offers several opportunities to learn new terms.

   The artist Pamela Farrell talks about lacunae, and I have to stop her there to learn more about this term. A lacuna is, basically, a blank space, a missing part, a gap or a deficiency. When Ms. Farrell talks about lacunae, she is referring to the gaps in memory that survivors of trauma experience. Ms. Farrell, who lives on a former farm in Raritan Township, earned a master’s of social work from Marywood University in 2002, and practices psychotherapy in Lawrence, in addition to being an artist.

   Having earned a bachelor’s degree from the Mason Gross School of the Arts in 1991, and worked in printmaking and sculpture, she gravitated to the medium of encaustic because it helps her to explore themes of identity and memory, and reveal vestiges, scars, memories and clues in the layering process — much as a person in psychotherapy will peel away the layers.

   ”There may be very good reasons why some memories are not accessible,” says Ms. Farrell. “There’s always some protection over the underlying layers. I think of beeswax as a protector and preservative, and respecting that vulnerability... We can’t walk around with everything exposed. We need layers of protection.”

   And that brings us to another word-of-the-day: Encaustic is basically a method of painting from molten beeswax with added pigment that dates back to the 5th century BC. Fayum — the third and final word for the day — were mummy portraits made with wax in ancient Egypt. Wax appealed to oil painters because it shortened the lengthy drying time for oil.

   In ancient times, according to Ms. Farrell, powdered pigment — color — was made from ground stones or blackened wood and then mixed with beeswax and resin (tree sap) that would harden the wax. It was melted over fire to a molten state, and then burned into the wood substrate using a heated iron.

   While examples of 5th century encaustic can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the form experienced a resurgence in the 20th century, rediscovered by such artists as Arthur Dove, Brice Marden, Diego Rivera and Jasper Johns.

   Ms. Farrell became enchanted with the medium when she saw the exhibit Waxing Poetic at the Montclair Art Museum in the late ‘90s. “I had done sculpture incorporating found objects and melted beeswax, and I love the smell and the plasticity of it,” she says. “And I love painting with it.” She rubs a section of one of her works, then invites a viewer to inhale the candle-like scent.

   ”As an unpredictable, organic medium, encaustic has especially been embraced by a generation of process-oriented artists reacting against the industrial, prefabricated mediums of Minimalist and Conceptual art,” wrote Montclair Curator Gail Stavitsky for the catalog. “Today, at the end of the century, many artists find encaustic to be uniquely appropriate for the communication of a vast array of spiritual, philosophical, environmental, and painterly concerns. Functioning as a seductive skin or membrane, encaustic is an unusually malleable and mutable medium that evokes bodily sensations, emotions, alchemical transformations, religious rituals, layers of history, and the passage of time.”

   Indeed, since it is difficult to work with this medium outdoors, it is conducive to introspection.

   It is challenging to discern the luminosity of these works when reproduced in a black-and-white newspaper, so they should be experienced in the gallery. There are several on-line videos demonstrating the process, but even these cannot convey the waxy nature of the surface.

   ”Beeswax is a preservative and becomes a permanent surface on the wood,” says Ms. Farrell. “The beeswax becomes part of the strata below.”

   Using Joanne Mattera’s The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax (Watson-Guptill, 2001), Ms. Farrell taught herself the technique and began experimenting on her own. “I took to it and began painting luminous, luxurious colors,” she says. “The wax provides gem-like colors I hadn’t seen in oil — it’s seductive.”

   She works with 20 pounds of wax at a time, melting it in a large lobster pot on an electric burner. The space is well-ventilated, and on an el-shaped counter she assembles heated palettes of paints in pots and pans. A crockpot is used to keep the medium (beeswax and resin from a tree in Madagascar) molten. And yes, the colony collapse disorder that has led to a decline in honeybees has driven up the price of the wax Ms. Farrell tries to secure from local farmers.

   Wood panels are used as the surface, and sometimes Ms. Farrell will stretch canvas over the frames for texture. The wax is applied with brushes, then layered and scraped using spatulas, knives and kitchen tools. “I scrape and melt and allow the layers to show through,” she says. “You have to work quickly” — the wax will harden — “and I use a tacking iron, heat gun or torch to manipulated it. Even when it hardens it’s still pliable. Some people use heat lamps. You have to get familiar with the characteristics of wax, and the temperature, and know how it reacts to the heat.

   ”There’s a huge element of chance that is scary and exciting,” she continues, “but something beautiful can happen.”

   After the wax has hardened, Ms. Farrell buffs it with cloth for a polished surface. “Buffing can reveal more depth. It can recede and come out at you at the same time.”

   Tremain Smith, the other artist in this exhibit, uses a similar technique and also incorporates collage into the canvases — bits of text from old yellowed books and fiber and fabric found on the street near her West Philadelphia home. Text is deliberately used sideways or upside down — its message is not important, but rather it is used as a design element. Nevertheless, viewers attempt to read it, according to Ms. Smith.

   Inspired by the walls, buildings, doors and colors of her urban setting, Ms. Smith finds her eye drawn to patches and squares. She is also interested in walls that may have been painted long ago, then painted over “or where buildings are torn down and what remains creates beautiful inspirational patterns.”

   She works intuitively, with no plan, and “let the process guide me. I will make a mark on a panel, step back, and that leads to the next thing. The wonderful thing about this process is, you can build up and tear down, reheat and take it off, leaving beautiful marks. There’s no intellectual decision, but I’m guided by the materials.”

   Her titles are as intuitive as the painting, reflecting the inner state of being, she says.

   ”I am interested in mystical aspects of religion, such as Kabalism, the tree of life, alchemy — these designs are fascinating to look at. I’m interested in divination, to discern the unseen. I see painting like that — it’s a process of discovery or revelation.”

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  Encaustics by Tremain Smith and Pamela Farrell is on view at the Ruth Morpeth Gallery, 43 W. Broad St., Hopewell, through April 15. Gallery talk and reception, March 28, 3-6 p.m. 609-333-9393; www.ruthmorpeth.com
  
  Read more about the visual arts in central New Jersey at The Artful Blogger by Ilene Dube: http://www.packetinsider.com/blog/art/