“My husband (artist Brian Mathus) and I moved here from Portland” Jen told me. “We had been trying to buy a house there, but it just wasn’t working out. Then one day I used Google Earth to look at the neighborhood in Dayton where I had lived as a small child and also the neighborhood where I had visited my grandfather. Looking at Dayton’s streets a feeling came over me and I heard, or thought I heard, a voice saying “Salmon go thousands of miles to the place they were born.”

“I went online and looked at property in Dayton. I couldn’t believe the prices. So we bought a house in Dayton’s Five Oaks neighborhood and we left Portland.”

“Moving wasn’t easy. We had to do some work on the house we bought and we had to find jobs here. I found a job teaching art, which I love. And then we had to find this studio. Brian and I paint here almost every weekend. We bring the kids and they work on their own projects in the room that adjoins this one.”

“Almost all of my pieces involve encaustic. It wasn’t part of my training in college, but as soon as I tried it I fell in love with it. You can see I have an array of encaustics on the hot plate. I love how you can move the color around and watch it flow. I love how you can do layers and layers and then start carving into it. You can put additives with it. You can collage with it. It’s just very versatile.”

“But my pieces aren’t juts encaustic. There’s oil paint, gold leaf, shellac, gesso, and more. Everything is done on birch panels.”