Where Fire Meets Pigment
Encaustic painting binds beeswax, damar resin, and mineral pigment into a surface that breathes and shifts with each pass of the heated tool.
Living Material
Beeswax is a biological medium — it carries the memory of the hive, absorbing warmth and releasing it slowly. Every CEREUS panel is made with cold-pressed beeswax sourced directly from organic apiaries.
Ancient Fire
The word encaustic derives from the Greek enkaiō — to burn in. Each layer is fused with heat, bonding pigment to panel in a process that ancient Egyptian artisans used to preserve the faces of the dead for eternity.
Timeless Permanence
Encaustic paintings do not yellow, crack, or fade with age. The Fayum portraits, painted over two millennia ago, remain vivid today — proof that wax is the most archival medium on earth.
Works in Wax
Where Wax
Becomes Art
CEREUS operates from a small, light-filled atelier where temperature, time, and intention converge. The studio smells of warm beeswax and pine resin — an olfactory anchor to centuries of practice.
"I work with fire every day. Not to destroy, but to reveal — layer after translucent layer, until the panel glows from within."
Each work begins with a prepared wood panel, coated in molten wax. Pigment is suspended, heat fuses each application, and the surface is buffed to a luminous depth unachievable in any other medium.
Meet the ArtistCreation Process
Four foundational stages transform raw beeswax into luminous encaustic art.
Wax Preparation
Raw beeswax is melted and blended with damar resin crystals at precise ratios to achieve the ideal melting point and adhesion for panel work.
Pigment Suspension
Dry mineral and earth pigments — ochre, cobalt, burnt sienna, ultramarine — are stirred into the molten wax, creating individual color pots.
Layering & Fusing
Each wax layer is applied with brushes or tools, then fused with a heat gun or torch — bonding it to the layer below to build translucent depth.
Burnishing
The finished surface is hand-burnished with soft cotton to bring up the characteristic encaustic luminosity — a glow that seems to radiate from within.
The Fayum Tradition
The Fayum mummy portraits, painted in Roman-era Egypt between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, represent the earliest surviving tradition of encaustic painting on panel. These luminous, hauntingly life-like faces were painted in hot wax and placed over the mummies of the deceased.
CEREUS draws direct lineage from this tradition — honoring the same materials, the same intimate relationship between artist and medium, and the same belief that art can outlast the body it was created to honor.
Voices of the Collection
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Whether acquiring an existing work or commissioning a new panel, we welcome inquiries from private collectors and institutions alike.