Profile

Darlene is an award-winning fine art photographer and encaustic artist based in Columbus, Ohio. After a career of teaching art, she began experimenting with photography and now specializes in painting-with-light. From night landscapes to still life’s in her dark studio, the common elements are off-camera lights and extremely long exposures. Darlene has invented techniques for adding virtual shapes, lines, and colors to photographs.

Darlene still experiments today but has added painting with encaustics to her repertoire of art tools. In that medium she initially made smooth photo encaustics but soon began building encaustic layers that extended above the surface. After some experimentation, Darlene discovered that she can build and form paper then dip many times in encaustic medium to create high reliefs. Now Darlene’s encaustic work includes a wide range of techniques and topics.

Both painting-with-light photography and painting with encaustics are complex, time-consuming, and difficult but it is the challenge of these media that fuels Darlene’s creative spirit.