Victoria Primicias

"I like to create art that resonates with the quieter, more reflective nature of our being. Voluminous clouds, lapping waves, or vast, empty fields evoke a momentary desire for contemplation and solitude. It seeks to connect at a deeper level."

Victoria Primicias was always drawn to water. As a child in the Philippines, her family spent school breaks playing on Lingayen Beach where General Macarthur once landed. Later emigrating to Toronto, the artist enjoyed sailing on Lake Ontario, and when work took her to Chicago, she chose to live a block away from Lake Michigan. Primicias loves painting with oil and wax for its luminosity and highly textural quality.

Encaustic paint is a mixture of beeswax, damar resin, and colored pigment. The paint is melted at 200 degrees F and applied in 6-20 layers onto a wooden panel. Each layer is fused to the layer beneath with a blowtorch to create, in effect, a big ball of wax. Between layers, the artist marks the wax by gouging, incising, and scraping to reveal previous layers.

Victoria Primicias is a 25-year graphic design veteran whose work has been recognized in the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Communication Arts magazine, and Print magazine. She graduated with a bachelor's degree of fine art history from the University of Toronto and received a graphic design diploma from George Brown College.