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Self-taught artist, Laura Oakes has lived a creative life. Laura's works include painting and drawing, graphic illustration and creating theatrical props, costumes and scenery painting for Community Theater.  Laura has also served the arts community as both Vice President and President of The North Country Arts Council and Arts On The Square Gallery Manager.

Laura discovered the beauty of encaustic work from former Northern NY Artist, Penny Flick, and embraced the opportunity to take instruction from jewelry designer and encaustic artist, Sandy Simonian, while living in Honolulu, Hawaii. 

Laura creates intriguing and beautiful encaustic work, a spontaneous medium where beeswax and damar resin are melted then combined with pigment and applied to heat-resistant substrates. Laura layers her wax beautifully creating both opaque and translucent effects and combining colored wax with collage materials (like sand, shells, drawings, foils, photos, and paper). Often working to create a variety of finishes by revealing layers below with wax being scraped and building textures then polishing the cured and hardened medium to a gloss. 

Laura Oakes' encaustic paintings are abstract and realistic, subtle and bold, always inspiring.