Guided Tour: The Use of Wax in Painting in the Collection
Presentation by Isabelle Hawkins
Tuesday, April 7, 2026, 3:30 PM
Free, in English
At the Gallery
Registration Required
Tomorrow, April 7, join Isabelle Hawkins, a first-year master’s student in Art History, for a presentation of research developed during her curatorial internship. Focusing on works in the collection by Marion Wagschal, Louis Comtois, Marc Garneau, and Tony Scherman, Hawkins examines the renewed use of wax in painting in Canada and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on close visual and material analysis, she situates these works within a broader resurgence of encaustic practices, asking what this material makes possible and how each artist mobilizes it toward different formal and conceptual ends.
Limited spots. To register, email prakash.krishnan@concordia.ca
The Gallery welcomes Isabelle Hawkins for a curatorial internship during the Winter 2026 term.
Isabelle graduated with a BA in Art History from McGill University in 2025 and is currently a first year master’s student in Concordia’s Art History program. Her research focuses on contemporary North American art, particularly wax sculpture. At the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, she hopes to study encaustic drawings by Tony Scherman and Aganetha Dyck’s work Flower Girl’s Dress. Isabelle has worked at McGill’s Visual Arts Collection as a research intern. She has also served as an archives and documentations services assistant and gallery attendant at La Guilde.