Jeremy Ashburn: Hey guys, I'm Jeremy Ashburn and I've got Julia Fosson here.

Julia Fosson: Hey Jeremy.

Jeremy Ashburn: Today, we're actually just asking her some of the questions that her clients usually ask her. What would you say the main question that people ask about your florals?

Julia Fosson: Well, this is a different technique, so when you come in to my studio, you'll see lots of different styles that I do. I work with beeswax and demar and pigment. What I use for this, is I start with ten layers of wax and then I paint with ink. Then, I burn some of the ink off and I paint more ink on, then I burn some off. Then, I finish it with the last coat of beeswax with demar to protect it. This is a technique that I started doing because I had a large commission to do. I had a four foot by three foot commission that somebody had asked me to do and I wanted to tighten up my florals. I wanted to make sure I had something a little more wispy. I wanted stemware. I didn't want them to be in vases and they were always in vases. I thought, "That's kind of weird." I didn't like it because it was like a blob of vase.

I wanted to have some kind of stemware to it. Then, I started just experimenting with all different types of inks and paints and I ended up with this style. Since then, it's been very popular. This particular one is the one that didn't make it. My commission process is that I do two. If you want one, I do two because as much as you don't think you know what you want, you know you don't want it when you see it. I always do two. If you're spending that much money on something, you should have a choice. I feel like it's important that you have a choice because it's going to be yours and hanging on your wall, so I want you to be really happy with it. I'll do two very similar ones and then you can have the choice. This is the one that didn't go with the family.

The beautiful thing about this is that the ink is reactive. I can put different colors in different places and it'll react. It'll create a different look. The buds are just so delicious because they're so tiny, but they've got a lot to them. This inside interior area where you can create little teeny new blossoms or new buds, are kind of hidden. Someone referred to this as 'Bill the Cat' from the cartoon, is that Gary Trudeau? It's one of the Trudeaus, anyway. 'Bill the Cat' is like, aah because it's all wispy and crazy. These have been extremely popular and now that I pretty much just do them by commission. I have prints available for most of them.

Jeremy Ashburn: It kind of looks like a cross between watercolor and pen and ink.

Julia Fosson: Yes. A lot of people actually think they are watercolor, especially the printed ones. They look like watercolor because they're done on watercolor paper. I think it's because it's so liquid looking that it does look like a watercolor because the color is so vibrant. Then, it's protected by that last coat of wax, which is really nice.

Jeremy Ashburn: Does the last coat of wax make it pop a little bit? Obviously in video, you can't tell the same way when you're in person, but it really just pops right off the canvas.

Julia Fosson: I think it creates a little subtlety to it, but it also creates more of a three dimensional component to it.

Jeremy Ashburn: Definitely. They're fabulous.

Julia Fosson: Thank you.

Jeremy Ashburn: Thanks a lot. Now, if you want to see more, just go to JuliaFosson.com. You can reach her through social media or call her, email her. Just don't wake her up in the middle of the night.

Julia Fosson: No. Thank you Jeremy.

Jeremy Ashburn: Thanks a lot.

Hi, I'm Julia Fosson from Julia Fosson Encaustic Art in the River Arts District in the Hatchery Studios in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm going to talk to you today about this particular painting, it's called: Creating a Story That Will Never End. I think in our lives we're always creating stories, and we hope that some of them never end because it could be good for us. This particular piece is interesting because of this particular technique at the top. It was a mistake, which is great because I love happy mistakes. I just ran with it, and since then I've done quite a few paintings with this particular style at the top. It all has to do with this particular purple I use, and this purple pushes all the colors away. I can over it, and over it, and over it, but the purple will always come back. It creates these little, tiny explosions within the painting which is really, for me, very beautiful.

In this little piece down here: I do chairs, chairs are very important to me, they're like people. This particular chair is transferred with graphite and charcoal, and then I've taken the newspaper and I've rubbed it into the wax so it creates a transfer. In here you'll see all types of words within the chair, it's almost like a reading chair. Then I have a little dog from a cartoon that was rubbed into that. Little side bar story: I had a painting over on the and I had a gentleman come up to me and he said, "I want to buy the one that has the little cat in the window." I'm like, "I don't have a cat in the painting," he's like, "Oh yeah, you do." I'm like, "Um, no, I really don't," and he's like "Yeah, you do." I go over there and sure enough I had done a comic and I didn't realize the little kitten was in that painting, and he's like, "Yeah, you do." He bought the painting, which was very nice.

This particular piece has very similar to a lot of my chair paintings, because I like white space. I like you to fill what white space is, I don't want to fill a whole piece often with a color because sometimes we need that quiet. I think for this particular one, because you're trying to create that story that will never end, you want that solid, quiet, contemplative kind of feeling. If you want to see more, please go to my website: juliafosson.com. I'm also on social media. Take a look and call me.

Hi, I'm Julia Fosson from Julia Fosson and Encaustic Art in the River Arts District, Hatchery Studios in Asheville, North Carolina. Today, I'm going to talk about the mountain series. This is a series that began when I first moved to Asheville, and it started because I didn't paint for a year.

Everybody kept asking me, "So, are you inspired by the mountains?" and I would politely say, "No," because I didn't think I was. I didn't want them to think that I was a landscape painter, so when I started painting, this was the first series that came out. They just appeared, and they're so beautiful.

What I do is, this is a different technique. I take a heat gun versus the blow torch. Every layer that I put on, I fuse it, but this way, for these series, I want the wax to blow. I want it to move, so I'm creating a landscape by air, by making the air move the wax, and I can push it to however I want it to go. I keep adding colors as I go along, and it got to all these stretches out to the end, or I can push it up, or I can push it down. I get these beautiful little landscapes that are almost surreal.
 
Then, what I do is I go to the Blue Ridge Parkway, not physically, but mentally, and I get all the Trail Head names, and I look at the photographs from the Trail Heads and I picture which ones should have those particular names. For instance, this one's called Green Stone Trail. This one is Green Nob Tower, and this one is Cross Rock.

I just think that they're so sweet and so gentile, but you want to be in these. You want to get closer and be a part of them, and I think that it just helps when you're here to actually see them up close and personal.

If you have any questions, please visit my website. Feel free to take a look at juliafosson.com. I'm also on social media. Check me out.