An artist coming to showcase her work in Jasper paints with the conviction that there is beauty in all of nature. Almost to prove her point, her primary artistic medium is nature in raw form: bees wax.

Starting April 2 and running until April 18, the Brushfire Gallery will be showcasing the work of Marie Banville, in an exhibition titled ‘If design govern in a thing so small.’

Banville is showcasing a style called encaustic painting. Using bees wax with added pigments, encaustic painting involves taking wax, heating it and applying it to a surface for a highly textured finish. It is an extremely old style that has existed since before the birth of Christ.

“It’s not toxic or bad for the environment and I like that,” said Banville, who used to buy her bee’s wax from a honey factory — the factory has since closed and she’s working off a back supply of leftover wax.

The theme of Banville’s exhibition will be on whether or not there is an all powerful designer behind the beauty of nature.

“I’ve always been interested in nature,” said Banville. “The inherent beauty of nature.”

Banville said that she was preoccupied with the poem Design by Robert Frost when she was working on her latest exhibit.

The poem ponders what role design and the designer plays in nature. ‘What brought the kindred spider to that height, then steered the white moth thither in the night?’ asks Frost. He seems to be asking if there is a designer to the beauty and horror of nature and whether that designer is cruel, kind or indifferent. In short, does design govern in a thing so small?

Banville said that she believes that beauty is inherent in the design of nature and that the beauty is there deliberately.

“It seems like the further we get from nature, the uglier and uglier things can get,” she said. “Humans can create things that can be beautiful, but ... You just have to look at what’s happening in the tar sands or anywhere else to see what man can also do.”

Banville says that when she sees deliberate beauty in nature in everything from the spiral curve of a sea shell to a dragonfly’s wings. That beauty may arise through evolution, but something set the beauty in motion; there was a designer, there was a plan.

Banville, who lived in Jasper for 11 years and whose father hails from here, said that she has always been an artist. She started her formal education at the Alberta College of Art just before she was 20, but soon realized that she didn’t have the life experience necessary to be an artist. So, she dropped out of school, travelled Europe, and returned to the University of Regina to finish her Bachelor of Fine Arts.

After that came a variety of different jobs which included 15 years of working in print making. Banville said that she thinks that part of her decision to work in encaustic painting came from her print making career as the two share similarities.

Print making involves a lot of etching and scraping into metals and the use of hot plates and heat guns and high temperatures.

“There is a very physical process of working with the heat. I’m not just putting on the paint. The wax cools very fast. I have to be quick with my brushes,” she said. “I have to make conscious decisions about what I’m going to do. Mistakes can be buried, but I do have to be very deliberate.”

Banville says that the covering and uncovering of work is also something that she enjoys about working with bees wax. It’s a heavy substance that can be applied very thickly. Banville layers a lot of her work and underneath the wax, she sometimes uses paper strips taken from old books, water colour paintings and other bric-à-brac.

“It’s a bit like an archaeological dig,” she said.

Archaeology is essentially the search for buried truth. Humankind’s history, forgotten in time, covered in dirt, layer upon layer, is uncovered and pondered.

Banville said that she wants people to think about her work in the same way. “I want people to think about what’s below. To look closely and see what’s taken for granted,” she said. “The process is related to the final product.”