Purchase a raffle ticket for an opportunity to win this one-of-a-kind encaustic painting by George Hansen, commercial beekeeper from Oregon. Titled "Starting Over Again," this piece could be yours.

You have until January 31^st for a chance to win!

Artist's Statement

This is an encaustic painting, meaning the painting medium is pigmented beeswax, applied as a liquid while hot. I have no training as an artist. I am a commercial beekeeper. Our business is one of the larger beekeeping operations in Oregon, providing pollination services to growers in the western US. I became aware of encaustic by chance. Beekeepers have a natural interest in honey and beeswax uses, and for me encaustic painting has been an intriguing challenge in problem solving and expression.

Honey bees are the primary pollinator for a significant portion of our food supply. Commercially managed honeybee colonies do almost all of that work, since wild pollinators are not managed for health and population. They cannot be transported to blooming crops to guarantee adequate seed or fruit set in large agricultural plantings. A surprising percent of the foods we eat are not native to North America, so it is not surprising that native pollinators are not always very good at pollinating plants that are not part of their evolution. Honey bees are opportunists pollinating a wide variety of plant species and are social, overwintering in large colonies. There is a long history of interaction between honey bees and humans on nearly every continent.

Honey bees, and therefore beekeepers, respond to the weather and seasons. Every spring is a new beginning and a chance to reconnect with the bees in a new cycle of the relationship between those bees and food production.

"Starting Over Again" is a depiction of that season of rebirth and rebuilding with its optimism tempered by the enormous amount of work to be done.

George Hansen Painting Raffle

One-of-a-kind Encaustic Painting