About Chelsea
Chelsea Villegas is a mixed media painter living in Monmouth County NJ. She earned a degree in painting at University of Delaware. Shortly after graduating she began teaching herself the ancient art of encaustic after a pivotal experience with an encaustic painting. She was instantly mesmerized by the texture, depth, and luminosity inherent in the wax.
Over the course of twenty years she has refined and developed a totally unique multi-media approach to working with molten wax. She focused on raising and homeschooling her children for the better part of a decade while continuing to hone her craft. Through her fearless experimentation in the studio she has found a way to combine encaustic with drawing, photography, oil paint, pastels, as well as collage and found objects. Chelsea’s work showcases her love of nature and her keen eye for pattern, texture, and detail.
Chelsea lives with her husband and two children on a peaceful, wooded property, 15 minutes from the beach. She loves reading, travelling, practicing her faith, and spending time with family and friends. She runs an art and early childhood education program and shows her work at Main Street Gallery in Manasquan, Solace Gallery in LBI and at various art fairs around the country.
Artist Statement
I create mixed media encaustic paintings that celebrate the inherent beauty, power, and intelligent design of nature.
Most of my subject matter is informed by my childhood experiences. I grew up playing in the woods, running through the yards of our neighborhood with each tree mapping the route, marking my subconscious. I remember how solid and expansive the oak tree felt, the quiet protected space under the weeping willow, the fragrant bed of pine needles under the evergreens. I’m always scanning the landscape for a unique, singular tree or observing the color and design of flowers and plant life.
Sitting on the shoreline where the waves gently ebbed and flowed, sifting through the sand for shells and becoming mesmerized by the rhythm of the sea was also a deeply formative experience for me as a child. The translucency of the water, the lacy remnants of seaweed and textures of the beach, all inform my representation of being near the ocean.
We lived down the road from a large open air flea market that was always too hot and dusty for my liking as a child but I was fascinated by the tables piled with junk and treasures alike. It was the beginnings of my love of textiles, patterns and discovering objects with history and character.
Art represents possibility and a way to access the extraordinary. All of life becomes source material. Illustrations in a book, the transparency of water and waves, patterns of tree branches, spirals in a seashell, the stunning geometry of a flower or a butterfly. I collect this imagery and combine it with the handmade papers, vintage textiles and lace, pastels, encaustic, and oil paint. I love the element of serendipity and chance that arises from my process or when some small trinket I collected finds its way into a painting years later. The end result is a combination of disparate parts and materials that combine to create an elegant and eclectic new way of seeing world.
My paintings are reflections of the liminal places that lives inside all of us. Somewhere between a memory and a dream, they stem from a yearning to stay close to the mystical undercurrent in life. My hope is that the work inspires the viewer to reach beyond the mundane and cultivate wonder, peace, and creativity in their daily lives.