Work of wax

Artist Bhagyashree Sutha uses the ancient method of beeswax for her art-work

Like most artists, Bhagyashree Suthar has a certain discipline while going about her works. She starts with gouache colours over a canvas. This is followed by placing kite paper dunked in water, to add a dash of colour. The procedure is repeated 15-20 times to achieve the desired tint. Once the canvas is dry again, molten beeswax is poured over it before making quick strokes on it with a scraper. Emerging out of these strong crisscrossing strokes are futuristic bridges, intersecting planes and arcs among other things. She finishes it off by running a blowtorch over the work. The end result of which is layers that jut out to give it a 3D effect, making its futuristic designs come to life. Exhausting as it sounds, it’s can also be painful — literally. Often the 25-year-old is subject to burns, thanks to her unusual artist tools. But Bhagyashree isn’t complaining.

She says, “With beeswax, I can create anything I want; I can add whichever colour I imagine. Since I want to represent modern architecture, the wax’s shiny finish helps me recreate my vision of the future.”

For the uninitiated, beeswax process was used to create portraits of mummies in Egypt and was the preferred method during the European Renaissance period. Today, only handful artists are keeping the form alive.

Working with beeswax comes with a host of challenges. For instance, heating the beeswax to achieve the right consistency is tough. “If the wax is heated for anything more than twenty minutes, it tends to burn and get black. The entire batch has to be thrown out in such a case,” she informs. Working with beeswax at a high temperature meant that Bhagyashree often came home with bruises and burns. She says, “Once the wax fell on my legs and I burnt myself horribly.” But its malleability is what persisted the artiste to continue using it.

The transition from traditional colours to beeswax as a medium was easy for Bhagyashree since she was bored of using traditional gouache or watercolours for her painting. Her experiment to recreate the traditional method didn’t achieve a similar effect initially. It was then that she decided to include kite paper to add colour. “I needed to use many permutations to get distinct colours. Using wet kite paper to get a deeper colour was an accident. The results however have been satisfying.”