Tamera Abaté

Tamera Abaté grew up among the wheat fields of the Columbia Basin in eastern Washington — vast open skies and the ever-changing tapestry of fields that still anchors her work. She now lives and paints in a quiet mountain valley in north central Washington, with her family and a collection of horses, dogs, and cats.

She works in encaustic — the Greek word means "to burn in" — building images on wood panel with as many as thirty layers of fluid beeswax, damar resin (tree sap), and pigment, fused and moved with a propane torch. Shapes arise organically within defined fields of color; the wax and pigments merge into a single entity with a visible push and pull of energy. Her subjects are seascapes, landscapes, horses, birds — "the beauty of the natural world," she has said, "and the way I see myself moving through it." She also works in oil, mixed media, and clay.