Never content with one style of photography, Dana Patterson Roth has recently been exploring encaustic photography; a process of applying hot beeswax onto an image. That’s the focus of her new exhibition, Layers of Memory. Roth says there is something about the wax, the way it looks and feels, that awakens senses beyond sight and adds new depth and meaning to an image. Pigments, textures and objects are incorporated into the layers of beeswax, as other parts are scraped away.
Born and raised in New Mexico and a long-time Placitas resident, Roth fell in love with photography at the age of ten. She studied photography and painting at UNM, the Santa Fe Photography Workshop and other venues. Beginning with black and white photography, Roth embraced color when she switched to digital cameras and began to let go of her self-imposed rules and traditional guidelines. She now works in both black and white and color and loves exploring new ways a camera can be used or an image can be created.
Roth shows yearly in the Placitas Studio Tour and the Placitas Holiday Market. She helped found Wild Hearts Gallery in 2018, is on the Placitas Studio Tour Board and served on the board of the Placitas Holiday Sale.
“I am still and may always be in the experimental stage. I love choosing an image and then listening to it, letting it guide me,” Roth said. “With encaustic photography I can add wax, colors, texture, or even objects to a photograph, to emphasize certain features, or scrape away parts. I think this is what I do with life sometimes: remembering and even re-interpreting moments of my life, hanging onto what seems most important to me, while letting other parts fade away or be obscured by time.”
The artist’s reception will be on Saturday, April 13 from 1-3 p.m. A First Sunday ARTScrawl Meet the Artist event kicks off the month on April 7, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Come by for a cup of specialty coffee and visit. You can also take a visual tour of this exhibit and the gallery by visiting wildheartsgallery.com.
Wild Hearts Gallery is an artists’ collective, supported by 15 local artists. Located at 221-B State Highway 165, the gallery is open Tuesday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.