Pathways and Transitions

Swampscott’s Robin Samiljan’s bright and engaging landscapes fill the street front gallery at Lynn Arts on Exchange Street with color.

This latest Samiljan show features a collection of photographs, watercolors and encaustic paintings around the theme “Pathways and Transitions.”

"Pathways and Transition" was inspired by Samiljan’s repeated trips to the bird sanctuary on Marblehead Neck, and is a reflection of the many different ways of seeing the same space. As the seasons change, as the light changes, what a person sees changes as well.

She photographed the same paths and pond throughout the year. She then reinterpreted those photographs in watercolor and encaustic.

For Samiljan, “this was both an artistic transition into learning how to paint with the encaustic medium as well as a literal transition depicted by seasonal changes in the landscape at the bird sanctuary … Pathways and Transitions exemplifies my personal artistic journey of change and growth.”

Known for her colorful and pleasing watercolors, Samiljan discovered encaustics while studying for her Master’s at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly a few years ago. Wax is a natural preservative and encaustic—painting with wax--has been around for centuries; it means “to burn in.”

Samiljan plans to demonstrate the encaustic painting process to the public at her reception. She says it took “6 months to a year” of trial and error to gain some mastery of the medium.

Briefly, the process uses heat, image transfer, and then layering, which involves painting and cooling. It is fascinating to watch as Samiljan takes a photograph or an image and transforms it into something completely different.

Most modern encaustic painters work in abstract, but Samiljan says that she has always “felt connected to landscape painting.” This makes her somewhat of an outlier, and she admits that while she was learning the method she kept asking herself whether “she was doing it right” because there was no one who was making what she wanted to create—encaustic landscapes.

Along with the Lynn show, Samiljan has a lot to look forward to. As a new member of the Copley Society of Art, she plans a show there in the winter. She will also speak at the Salem Enterprise Center in February about the “business of being an artist,” something that Samiljan says, all artists struggle with, since “It does no one any good if your work sits in a drawer.”

In the current show, a range of works are for sale, from shadow boxes to 18 x 24 encaustic paintings. The works are priced from $95 to $950. Next door at the Holiday Boutique are postcards of Samiljan’s work at $3 each.

The opening reception is Saturday, Dec. 3, from 2-4. The encaustic demonstration is at 3. Food and live music will be offered as well, in the Holiday Boutique across the hall.

“Pathways and Transitions” runs from Nov. 18 through Dec. 31, at Lynn Arts, 25 Exchange Street, Lynn. Parking is plentiful. For more information and to view more of Samiljan’s art, visit her website at http://www.robinsamiljan.com/Fine_Art_by_Robin/Home.html