Robin Denevan

This work is an exploration of the relationships and dualities of atmosphere and form. These paintings focus on a pause between extremes, a place where the imagery is continuous and rhythmic, a forest grove, a river's shore, a jungle canopy. For the past decade Robin Denevan has traveled extensively throughout Asia and Latin America with charcoal, graphite and ink as his primary media. The works' intent is to convey an emotional and visceral impression of his experiences abroad. His drawings are a journal of the strange and evocative landscapes he encounters while traveling. Though often realistic in nature, the styles shift with the changing landscapes and suggest departures for his abstract paintings.

Robin Denevan’s recent body of work is based on the Floating Gardens of Inle, Burma. He depicts the serpentine, agricultural rows of trees and vegetation in a lyrical and ethereal style. Robin paints on canvas stretched over wood panels with beeswax oil and natural resins. As a result, the paintings are highly textured luminescent landscapes that range from highly representational to the abstract. The works have a haunting sense of depth and atmosphere while maintaining a rich and varied surface. The luminous palate of these encaustic paintings, evoke a sensuous yet haunting marriage of dark and quiet waters.

“Robin Denevan’s encaustic paintings at Addington Gallery are mostly evocations of Asian landscapes with inevitable recollections of the fragility and measure of Asian art. But the easy seductiveness of the medium is withheld from becoming too easy by the way the artist seems to draw our eyes away from the wax surface to something that appears to be out in front of it.

A number of the landscapes are viewed as if through a sheet of glass blotched or streaked with rain. The elemental landscapes thus have become indistinct, and less of their character is conveyed through form than color. In the process, the panels move that much closer to abstraction while still remaining a kind of record of topographical and climatic conditions.

The surfaces of these pictures offer gratifications in and of themselves. Tree and grass forms are, for example, cut into the paint that, at times, almost billows around them. So there is some of the tactile sense of working in low wooden reliefs, which gives a rusticity to the more refined pleasures of the beeswax.”

Robin Denevan's wetlands landscapes are a far cry from Schrack's wax-covered photos, being built entirely from the panel surface up. What makes encaustic so versatile is that unlike oils or acrylics wax doesn't polymerize, so its solidifying is reversible. Colors can be mixed with molten wax and applied as one, but they can also be painted onto hardened wax and then be melted into the body of the wax. In "Quiet Delta," Denevan uses combined wax and pigment to draw and paint the atmospheric backgrounds of his landscape, then covers them with a layer of wax to soften them visually and create a feeling of distance.|0| Then he carves deep into the new surface to render foreground foliage, filling the knife cuts with color that stains the surrounding wax. Limiting his palette creates a mood of early morning or dusk, the margins of day and night appropriate to the marginal places he depicts. The way wax records everything that happens to it contributes a feeling of organic life, with all the mess and happenstance so characteristic of wild places. (Sue Martin)

Robin Denevan has traveled broadly over the past several years capturing landscapes and water scenes and creating beautiful encaustics. Instead of taking snapshots of his travels in Venezuela or keeping a journal of his experiences, Denevan set up his painting materials on riverbanks and created the wood panels of "Horizon Light." Denevan's technique and medium are unique and fanciful. Though many of the pieces appear to be similar at first glance, upon closer inspection the different shapes and textures caused by the hot beeswax make each painting one of a kind. The beeswax also affects the coloring, blending and blurring the saffron, vermillion and turquoise oil so the paintings look like they are being viewed through a veil. The wax causes the colors to be smooth and creates a unique experience for the eye. The impact of these pieces in the gallery is powerful. They are beautiful and the multi-paneled encaustics, such as "Triptych," are the most striking of all. Denevan hopes his paintings are more than just a visual experience and he has succeeded in this goal. The paintings make one think of a land far, far away and cause one to want to jump a plane to the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela. (Rachel Turney)

Back from his trip to Inle, Burma, Robin Denevan sounds more like an adventurer than an artist. From his spare white studio in Building 116 at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard, an enclave for 250 artists, he describes the scene that inspired his recent installment of work.

"We went out in the morning via canoe and there were these man-made floating gardens," he says. "As we passed by these land masses, the movement of the boat caused them to undulate in a serpentine way. I found the repeating patterns extraordinary."

The 29-year-old painter recreated the snaking lines of trees and vegetation amid swelling waters in a triptych entitled "Floating Garden," one of several new works on view this month at Ligne Roset, his 15th show since graduating from California College of Arts and Crafts with a B.F.A. in painting in 1997.

To reflect the rich, layered and dynamic natural beauty of this region, Denevan paints in encaustic, a mixture of pigments and melted beeswax, to create highly textured, almost glowing landscapes of oranges, yellows and greens.

Not mere representations of nature, Denevan's work offers an emotional impression of the pristine and timeless sites he's experienced

Encaustic Artist Robin Denevan employs layers of beeswax, oil paint, and natural resins to create visions of exotic locations from Asia and Latin America. The paintings glow with an inner light, and transend catagories of "abstraction" and "realism".

Encountering a Robin Denevan painting is a multi-sensory experience. This artist finds his motivation in his memories of trips to various exotic locations. Recent paintings find their origins in journeys down the Amazon, or China's Yangtze River. But these paintings are not about mere recollection. They are about sensory recall. You don't just look at a Denevan'you touch it, smell it, nearly taste it. The layers of beeswax, resin, and paint in these works engage our senses, and in doing so, they drop us, not into the location depicted, but into the artist's own vivid memories of that place.