Catherine Eaton Skinner & Suzanna Westhagen, Shingen XXVII, 2022, Beeswax, oil stick, microfiber paper, thread, bamboo, box, 47 x 13.5 x 2.5 in

Catherine Eaton Skinner is a multidisciplinary artist working in encaustic painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and book arts. Her practice is rooted in the natural world and the elemental forces of earth, water, fire, air, and ether, which she uses to explore balance, transformation, and continuity. Drawing from macro- and micro-scale observation, she works intuitively with materials such as beeswax, graphite, glass, textiles, metal, and found objects. Through processes of layering, erasure, fusion, stitching, and reassembly, she allows material history and physical behavior to shape each work.

Photography often serves as a starting point, with images of trees, water, sky, and landscape reworked through encaustic and printmaking techniques in which heat and fire play a central role. Her serial approach allows ideas to evolve over time, emphasizing process, memory, and material change.

Skinner's work reflects on decay, resilience, and the persistence of hope, framing her practice as an ongoing act of attention to nature, time, and transformation.