Salima Andany

Both pieces: Encaustic Wax and  Oil Painting; 8"x8" on wood panel 

Copyright (c) 2026 Salima Andany

Image Description:

Tracks Beneath the Surface

A dark, abstract image with swirling blue and green textures overlays a dimly lit subway platform. A yellow warning sign with “Danger” and a red circle is visible near the tracks in the bottom right corner.

Slow Dance With Me

Abstract, textured artwork with dark and muted tones. At the bottom right, yellow text on a hazy surface reads “SLOW DANCE WITH ME.” The surface appears rough, with splotches of green and gray throughout.

  

Artist Description:

Tracks Beneath the Surface

This title is especially powerful because it transforms the transferred roadway text into an emotional and poetic statement about memory, aging, accessibility, companionship, and the human need to move through life with others who are willing to slow down beside us.

This encaustic painting can be interpreted as a deeply layered meditation on memory loss, diminished mobility, and the quiet exclusion embedded within aging urban infrastructure. The hazy, obscured surface mirrors the unstable nature of memory itself - forms emerge and disappear beneath translucent layers of wax, much like fragmented recollections that can no longer be fully grasped. The soft dissolving edges and submerged imagery create the sensation of looking through fogged perception, where orientation and clarity are continually slipping away.

The encaustic photo transfer of the subway tracks becomes especially significant within this context. Public transit systems are traditionally symbols of movement, connection, and independence. Yet here, the tracks are partially buried beneath dense wax textures, appearing inaccessible and distant. The fragmented visibility of the station suggests not only physical barriers, but emotional and psychological ones as well. The warning sign in the lower corner intensifies this feeling - it speaks of restriction, danger, and prohibition, subtly reinforcing how many older transit environments were historically designed without consideration for people using mobility devices.

The painting's surface itself becomes metaphorical. Encaustic wax preserves while simultaneously concealing. Layers trap earlier marks underneath, just as experiences of independence, movement, and identity may remain present internally even when they can no longer be fully expressed outwardly. The pitted textures and scars across the wax resemble both erosion and endurance, suggesting the bodily realities of aging or disability alongside the resilience required to navigate inaccessible spaces.

Older transit systems, often built long before accessibility standards, can become spaces of exclusion where stairs, narrow platforms, unclear signage, and unsafe passageways quietly communicate who is welcome to move freely and who is not.

Within this reading, the painting transforms from an abstract urban scene into a psychological landscape. The obscured station becomes a metaphor for navigating both memory and the city while experiencing loss of certainty, autonomy, orientation, and ease of movement. Yet despite its darkness, the work retains traces of light and loss translucency. These passages suggest persistence: fragments of memory remain visible, pathways still exist beneath the surface, and the human desire for connection and movement endures even when systems fail to support it fully.

Slow Dance With Me

This encaustic work carries a profound emotional tension between intimacy and distance, movement and stillness, memory and disappearance. Beneath layers of molten wax and atmospheric pigments, fragments of an urban roadway emerge, revealing the phrase "SLOW DANCE WITH ME." The words appear partially submerged within the encaustic surface, transforming a familiar piece of street language into something tender, vulnerable, and deeply human.

Created through encaustic painting combined with photographic image transfer, the work embeds traces of the city directly into translucent wax layers. The encaustic photo transfer technique gives the imagery a dissolving, dreamlike quality, as though the scene is being remembered rather than directly observed. The transferred text drifts in and out of visibility beneath smoky blues, charcoal blacks, pale greens, and scarred textures, echoing the instability of memory and the emotional fragmentation associated with cognitive decline and aging.

The phrase "Slow Dance With Me" becomes central to the emotional narrative of the work. It reads as a quiet plea for patience, companionship, and gentleness in a world structured around speed and efficiency. Within the context of mobility loss and inaccessible transit systems, the words take on additional weight. Public spaces and transportation networks often prioritize movement without considering those who move differently-individuals using mobility devices, aging bodies, or people navigating physical and cognitive limitations. The work reflects the isolation that can arise when cities fail to accommodate vulnerability with dignity and care.

The encaustic surface itself becomes metaphorical. Pitted textures, fissures, and layered accumulations resemble both eroded pavement and deteriorating neural pathways. Yet encaustic wax also preserves what lies beneath it. Earlier marks remain embedded under each translucent layer, mirroring how memories persist in fragments even when clarity fades. The painting suggests that identity, connection, and longing endure despite loss.

There is also a subtle tenderness within the work's darkness. A dance requires trust, rhythm, and mutual adjustment. To "slow dance" implies moving together attentively, accommodating another person's pace rather than forcing speed or control. In this way, the painting becomes both a critique of inaccessible urban systems and an invitation toward empathy. It asks viewers to imagine cities, relationships, and communities built around care rather than urgency.

There is also a profound tension between motion and stillness throughout the work. Subway tracks imply forward movement and journeys, yet the composition feels suspended, immobilized, and obstructed. This contradiction can be read as reflecting the lived experience of individuals whose mobility has been reduced not merely by the body itself, but by environments that fail to accommodate changing physical needs.