Joanne Mattera

I work in a style that is reductive and geometric. My primary work is painting, primarily encaustic on panel. My secondary work, which I do each summer, is painting on paper, either with gouache made thin and grainy with water, or graphite powder suspended in alcohol. Where encaustic is hot and process intensive, gouache and graphite are cool, direct, and light on the brush. Usually color is the focus of my work, but after a series of monochromatic paintings in the spring—elongated diamonds within a square diamond field—I had a hankering to work achromatically in graphite. I transitioned onto paper, creating a series of interacting diamonds afloat on a field of indeterminate space. Despite the restricted palette, the work looks like color in black and white. I surprised myself. I love when that happens.  –Joanne Mattera, 2012