The Artful Home: Jhina Alvarado

This is a guest post from my friend Linda Weber, a writer and editor, home stager and designer, and artist in San Francisco. Linda often pings me with great art finds, so I'm thrilled that she agreed to share some of them here. Take it away, Linda!

Two years ago, I was messing around online when I stumbled on San Francisco artist Jhina Alvarado's encaustic paintings. Instant art crush. (What can I say? We all have our design addictions, and art is mine.)

"Intuitive" was the first word that sprang to mind when I attempted to describe Alvarado’s work. And when I visited her studio recently, she echoed the assessment: Not only do Alvarado’s creations look intuitive, that's exactly how she works. "I never know what a piece is going to be when I start it," she says.

What I love about encaustic artwork – which is created with oil-based pigments combined with wax – is its dreamy, layered quality. That’s exactly what drew Alvarado to the medium. "You can build translucency and create depth with the wax," she says.

She also likes the way you can use the wax to transfer images. Alvarado draws leaves, branches, and other images freehand on paper, for instance, before laying the paper against the wax. She then applies pressure to the back of the paper, rubbing repeatedly until the markings transfer to the wax. I'm a fan of Alvarado’s pared-down color palettes, too – she gravitates toward turquoises, ambers, greens, and saturated blues against a white or soft gray background.

Prices for Alvarado’s originals range from $225 for an eight-by-eight-inch painting to $1,500 for a 30-by-30-inch piece, with various options in between. And while I can't afford a large one anytime soon, that doesn't mean I’m going to stop dreaming about them.

See more of Alvarado’s work right here.