INSPIRATION JURIED EXHIBITION

M.E. KLESSE

M.E. KLESSE

(Rockport, TX)

Dawn’s Early Grief

encaustic, oil, milk protein, 16.5 x 13 x 0.75 inches

Price: $439.50

includes tax + shipping fee

ARTIST STATEMENT

Dawn’s Early Grief was created in direct response to the early morning tragedy of the July 4th, 2025, flooding in the Texas Hill Country, a moment when daybreak did not bring renewal, but rupture. For the EAI theme Inspiration, this work confronts inspiration not as something aspirational or uplifting, but as an involuntary ignition: a visceral response to collective loss that demands form. Working in encaustic, oil, and milk protein fiber, I turned to materials that carry both fragility and endurance. Wax preserves and entombs, oil stains and saturates, and the milk protein fibers stretch across the surface like connective tissue, binding, straining, and at times tearing apart. These elements became a language for holding what cannot be contained: the shock of sudden absence, the weight of lives interrupted, and the quiet violence of water reshaping everything in its path. The composition rises and collapses simultaneously. Pale light gathers at the top, suggestive of dawn, yet it is thickened, burdened, unable to fully illuminate what lies beneath. Below, vertical forms surge and erode, evoking both floodwaters and human presence, as if figures and landscape have become indistinguishable in the force of the event. The surface is scarred, pitted, and pulled, recording not just an image but an impact. Here, inspiration is not a choice but a consequence. It emerges from proximity to grief, from bearing witness, even at a distance, to the fragility of life and the speed with which it can be undone. Dawn’s Early Grief asks whether inspiration can be an act of mourning: a way of processing, honoring, and refusing to let such loss dissolve into silence.

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