“Looking Within:  Encaustic Paintings by Helen Lewis,” opened on Friday, May 13 in Gallery 2 at Art in Bloom Gallery located at 210 Princess Street, Wilmington, North Carolina.

The exhibit closes on Friday, September 16, with a reception from 6 – 9 pm.  Musicians Shirley Lebo (violin) and Sarah Stoloff (cello) will play at the reception and are both members of the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra.

Artist, Helen Lewis is from from Carrollton, Ohio.   The encaustic process uses molten beeswax combined with resin and oil pigments that are fused with a blow torch.  Helen Lewis often includes bits of old script, text or other ephemera in her work.  She explains, “I particularly love the luminous qualities and depth of layers that emerge as I fuse the various elements and pigments together.”  The paintings in this exhibit provide glimpses and hints of those layers and invite the viewer to look deeper within.  Lewis describes her creativity as an extension of her contemplative nature, “In creating, I work to follow the nudges I sense within my spirit.  In essence, I am invited deeper and I seek to mirror that invitation through my art.”