With a blowtorch in hand, Allison Shadday directs the hissing flame at a wooden board layered with paint and wax. Heat melts the surface, creating abstract patterns and textures that range from a soft, translucent glow to the cracked look of a dry creek bed. It’s all part of the encaustic painting process, an ancient art form that, for Shadday, reflects both her family background and her journey with multiple sclerosis.
Shadday began encaustic painting after her mother died in 2018. Until then, she had never drawn or explored any form of visual art. But creativity ran in her blood — both her grandmother and mother were artistic. Picking up the blowtorch felt like a way to channel their presence.
In the 1990s, while in her 30s, Shadday was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which would later influence her attraction to encaustic painting. Effective treatments for MS were nonexistent then, so she chose an unconventional therapy: allowing honeybees to sting her 30 times every other day to trigger an anti-inflammatory response. It helped manage her symptoms. At one point, when she and her husband lived in West Linn, Oregon, a beekeeper approached Shadday and her husband about keeping hives on their property.
“Bees started to play a big role in my life,” she said. Decades later, while visiting Seattle, she encountered a large encaustic painting. “When I saw this encaustic, and it was primarily created from beeswax, it sparked something in me.”
Creating Luminescent Images Through Wax and Fire
Shadday returned to O’ahu, where she was living at the time, and focused on learning the technique for encaustic painting. She took classes and experienced early success: She was accepted into the juried Haleiwa Arts Festival in 2019. “I sold 17 of 18 encaustic paintings, which motivated me, so I kept going,” she recalled.
Despite her success in the new medium, the tropical heat was starting to take its toll on her health. Seeking a change, the couple relocated to Central Oregon for its sunshine and temperate climate. “When we moved here, I needed a studio outside the house,” Shadday said. She found a shared space with several glass artists and chose the entryway specifically for its window, which provides essential ventilation from the encaustic process. “It’s messy, it’s smelly, and it’s physical. I paint with fire and a blowtorch,” she laughed.
In the Studio with Allison Shadday
The panel she’s working on began with five layers of brushed-on, melted white beeswax. Over that base, Shadday builds up dozens of pigmented wax layers, fusing each one to the last with her torch. While the wax is still molten, she can push the surface around to achieve unexpected color blends. “It’s very exciting when you see what emerges,” she said. For added texture, she sometimes embeds materials, copper strips or, recently, pretzels that dissolve away, leaving only the salt behind. As a painting nears completion, she’ll torch the surface again, encouraging a distinctive “cool crackle,” a Shadday hallmark.
She set the blowtorch down and stepped back to study the work.
“I love how this is turning out,” she said of the commissioned piece, an opportunity that arose when a collector spotted one of her paintings at the Layor Art gallery in downtown Bend. “It brings me a lot of joy to do this,” she said. The 63-year-old self-described extrovert stays active, including golfing five days a week, but noted that encaustic painting is the one thing that brings her indoors. “This is a place I can come to settle down and go inward, tapping a different part of my brain.”
In this space, she lets her ancestors, and even the honeybees, shine through each luminescent layer. Check out Allison Shadday’s art and read more about her here.
