No. 07 · 2026
Stratum VII
The Line Beneath the Light
24 × 24 × 2 in
Encaustic, damar resin and dry pigment on cradled Baltic birch
I · The encounter
A horizon you can look into.
At first, a line. Then the space around it begins to change. The sky is no longer above the land; it seems to be held inside the wax.
A horizon is only a decision about where the light stops. In this piece the light doesn't stop — it sinks, layer by layer, into forty-one fused films of wax until it rests on a single incised line.
II · The closer looking
The image changes
when you stay.
Follow the dark horizon from one side to the other. Notice how little is needed to divide a world — and how much happens in the quiet above it.
III · The material record
Not just an image.
A made thing.
Wax holds light. Pigment gives it a voice. A rigid panel holds the whole in place. The material is not incidental to the work; it is part of what you are looking at.
- Artist
- Tony Okrongly
- Work
- Stratum VII, 2026
- Dimensions
- 24 × 24 × 2 in
- Materials & support
- Encaustic, damar resin and dry pigment on cradled Baltic birch
- Original
- One individual work
- A long history. Thoughtful care.
- Surviving Fayum portraits connect wax painting to nearly two millennia of history. Every contemporary work still needs sound construction and care: avoid direct heat, hot vehicles, and temperature extremes.
IV · What the work knows
Understanding is another way of seeing.
Why does the upper sky glow from within?
Sun-bleached cappings beeswax melted with Grade-A Batavia damar in a measured ratio, held below smoking temperature. Each film is thin enough to pass light down to the white gesso and back to your eye.
Continue in the AtelierV · A place in your life
A room has enough things asking for attention. This work offers something else: a place for attention to settle. The longer you stay, the less empty that quiet becomes.
A real piece of art isn’t an object you look at — it’s an experience, a place, a feeling that you visit. My first child put it best, too young to know to say “I love you.” He said:
“I want to see your face all the time.”
A great piece of art is like that. It completes a room, a thought, a feeling in a way that nothing else can.
Admired by many. Made for one.
Is that person you?
You do not need to know everything about encaustic to feel a connection. And you do not need to decide today. Begin with the work that keeps calling you back.
