Encaustic is the general term that refers to the medium and technique of painting with molten wax, resin and pigments that are fused after application into a continuous layer and fixed to a support with heat.  The resulting enamel-like appearance gives a particularly sensuous quality to the textured surface.  Once applied to a surface, encaustic paint doesn't need to dry.  Instead, it needs to cool. Because it cools in minutes, additional coats can be added almost immediately.  Once its surface has cooled, encaustic paint presents a permanent finish, and yet the painting can be revised and reworked at any time - whether seconds later or years later.  It is a particularly durable paint, because wax is waterproof and over time can retain all the freshness of a newly finished work.

Historically, Greek artists are known to have painting with encaustic as long ago as the 5th century BCE .  The Roman historian Pliny, who wrote in the 1st century CE, tells us it was being used for a variety of paintings as well as for coloring marble and terra cotta.  Perhaps the best known of all encaustic work are the Fayum funeral portraits painted in the 1st through 3rd centuries CE by Greek painters in Egypt .  Though artists experimented with encaustic in the 18th and 19th centuries, it wasn't until the 20th century that its use was revived by artists including Robert Delaunay, Antoine Pevsner, Diego Rivera, and Jasper Johns.