Cynthia Garbutt

Artist on VibrantCast

Cynthia Horvath Garbutt is the founder of Studio Cire in Chicago. She creates her abstract art by employing encaustic processes. Using a nearly living medium that interacts with light and angle, her compositions in pigment and wax form an enduring artistic presence. Dating back to ancient Greece, encaustic painting is a process of combining wax, oil paint, and heat to produce lasting textured layered works of art. Given the independent nature of the heat element combined with the fluidity of liquid wax that ultimately hardens, no two pieces are the same. Studio Cire encaustic pieces are in collections both in the United States and internationally and have been sold in gallery space in the Midwest, displayed in retail space in the Gold Coast in Chicago, donated to global health nonprofits for auction, found in poetry publications, and included in The World of Interiors marketplace in 2021. Cynthia is a 2023 Circle Arts Foundation Artist of Excellence. Cynthia is also a poet, photographer, wife, mother, and global health advocate. She is dedicated to the idea that creativity in any form is a healing experience.