Kat Allie featured in state arts magazine

Kat Allie, department chair of fine arts and humanities at Ozarks Technical Community College, didn’t take art classes growing up but today, she’s using her skills as an artist to teach others.

Her abilities as an encaustic artist are featured this month in the Missouri Arts Councils magazine.

“I am honored to be one of the featured artists for encaustic painters in this state,” she said. “I’m really proud of the shout out that the Springfield Regional Arts Council gets in the article. To highlight that organization is amazing.”

According to the article by Barbara MacRobie, encaustic art is in its simplest form, encaustic paint is melted wax with added pigment. The artist brushes the hot paint onto a porous surface like a wooden board, then adds more wax layer by layer, reheating each layer to fuse it to the one below it.

“You paint while the wax is hot,” Allie said.

Allie is not only quoted in the story but the second half of the article is dedicated to Allie demonstrating the technique in text and photos.

One of her works, “Kiss It Better I,” is pictured in the magazine.

“This shadowbox is about loving, healing, and my young daughter. Let me kiss it better and Ill put the Band-Aid on it,” Allie says in the article.

Allie became interested in the encaustic technique about 14 years after attending an encaustic workshop in Santa Fe.

“I did that and I was hooked,” she said.

The unique technique is time consuming. While Allie has to work quickly while the wax is hot and fluid, building layer upon layer takes time. It can take up to eight hours to make the paint she need.

Not a lot of artists use the encaustic technique.

“You have to be committed to the work,” she said. “It’s hard, physical work. You have to love it to get committed to doing it. I love feeling the heat coming up from the surfaces. I can create so many different textures.”