Biodiversity Box Set (3)

Encaustic over matchboxes as small biodiversity prizes (set of 3)

I covered these matchboxes using my newly learnt encaustic skills with the aim of celebrating biodiversity before the call came for the conference. Much of my life I have been concerned for biodiversity, I even secured a job convincing farmers to protect our NZ native forest patches on their farms. In NZ we farm outdoors all year in an all-grass farming system which is so sustainable and it’s strengthened by having clover amongst the grass which fixes nitrogen to feed the grass and give increased natural feed protein for our animals. Clover needs bees for pollination and seed set for natural persistence. Hence beehives and farming are a natural fit and why NZ is a big honey producer. Our native forest patches and regions also supply manuka honey which is famed worldwide for its medicinal qualities so you will also find beehives in these areas. The matchboxes have a small block of cypress inside to create a firm base for the wax. The matchboxes in NZ are of a traditional brand “Beehive” so it seemed appropriate to me to make this work on these boxes. I have embedded native leaves in the wax and used gold encaustic to signify how important biodiversity is to us all. It’s about planting bee friendly plants to support bees all year round which I have done and still do. They are a species that give us so much.