For my first five years working in encaustic, I took pleasure in making the surface of my paintings smooth and bubble free. I loved the process and the seductive feel of my finished pieces. Eventually though, I needed texture and sculptural elements to tell my story. I had begun a series of paintings showing evidence of time passing and the complexity of accumulated years: walls peeling, layers revealed, rough textures. I experimented by embedding canvas and papers in wax. That worked fairly well in small paintings, but I couldn’t achieve the dimension and sculptural efects I needed to make larger statements in my work.