Hi, I'm LYN BELISLE (say "buh-LYLE"), artist, teacher, author, and perpetual work-in-progress. 
I live in beautiful multi-cultural San Antonio, Texas, where I practice art, design publications and eBooks, run a popular Etsy shop called EarthShards, and teach workshops.

SHARDS, RELICS, CLUES, AND CONNECTIONS

• BIO
• EXHIBITIONS
• PUBLICATIONS
• STATEMENT
• INTERVIEWS

My work has always been strongly influenced by the idea of “shards” as a metaphor for human communication across time. A shard can be a found fragment of clay, a rusty nail, a scrap of handwriting – any little clue that becomes a “secret handshake” between the maker and the discoverer. I am perpetually drawn to visible traces from the passage of time that suggest story fragments.

For decades I’ve worked with clay, fiber, and paper in assemblage and collage to express this non-verbal time-circle connection. When my friend Michelle Belto introduced me to the encaustic process in 2009, This new-to-me medium seemed the perfect companion for my most-loved materials. I’d briefly tried encaustic medium on collage, but I began to understand that beeswax is a metaphoric material in itself, ancient as clay, versatile as paper, compelling as ivory and bone. Now beeswax and encaustic are integral parts of my process.

HERE ARE FOUR WAYS THAT I EXPLORE THESE IDEAS THROUGH
ASSEMBLAGE, COLLAGE, AND MIXED-MEDIA PAINTING

In collage with encaustic and altered papers, celebrating anonymous faces and otherworldly places

In earthenware clay with found objects, creating spiritual and symbolic “neo-santo” assemblage

In fiber, with natural colors, wax, felt, tattered and dyed cheesecloth and digital photo images

In acrylic abstraction, with intuitive, non-referenced explorations of form and veiling