Colors are rich and varied in the works in progress from Elise Wagner’s studio in Astoria.

Artistic success is in the stars for Elise Wagner.

Heavenly constellations provide her inspiration, which embraces both astronomy and astrology. A devotee of NASA missions, she is as likely to mention the Jezero Crater on Mars as the mystical implications of the first return of Pluto.

Wagner and business partner Ren Allen, a marketing specialist, moved to Astoria in November after two decades at a Portland studio that blossomed into a hub for artistic events.

“I came here because I wanted to get closer to the inspirations for my work,” Wagner said. “I need to be closer to nature and inspired by my immediate environment.”

Allen’s summary is concise. “I just believe in this art,” she said.

Their white-walled, functional basement studio under their home near Franklin Avenue will be one of the 50 locations open to visit during the Astoria Open Studios Tour.

EncausticWagner and Allen have spent five months setting up the studio, lining shelves with colorful art supplies, hanging finished and partially completed work on walls and preparing a business area.

The etching press had to be dismantled to be installed and an accompanying cart squeezed through the basement entrance with one-sixteenth of an inch clearance.

Rothko, the cat, named for the Latvian-born abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, has the run of the place.

As well as creating, Wagner teaches online classes and in-person workshops. The studio tour follows classes on the Oregon Coast and most recently in Canada. She has also taught in Mexico.

Wagner’s current favored technique is encaustic art, in which hot wax is blended with pigmentation to create abstract images which may be framed; a hand-held blowtorch is among her tools. She teaches one technique that uses a printing plate comprised of collage materials called a collagraph.

‘Dream’Wagner is from Jersey City, New Jersey. Her aptitude was nurtured by a teacher, a product of New York’s open-access Cooper Union campus in New York, who encouraged her to enter her creations in contests. At age 14 she was entranced by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A parallel passion for studying dance in New York was shattered in a serious car accident. Wagner’s mother provided books and materials to channel her recovering energy in art.

She moved to the Northwest 37 years ago, studying painting and art history at Portland State University. Welding took her art in additional diverse creative directions.

She graduated from still lifes and oil paintings to mixed media, trying air brush work and commercial illustrating. Portland sculptor Mel Katz, another product of New York’s Cooper Union, was among her mentors.

Introducing a collection, Kimberly Marrero, an independent New York curator, commended how Wagner’s thought-provoking art displays creative urgency amid threats of climate change and social unrest, all filtered through the lens of a scientific explorer.

“With a painter’s keen sense of composition, Wagner thoughtfully integrates elements of abstract gestures with fragments derived from the natural world,” Marrero wrote.

ChangeAlthough Wagner exhibited in other cities, Portland provided her base for a professional studio, a lifestyle Wagner embraced until the coronavirus pandemic saw many galleries shift their business models to online sales. Accompanied by the Rose City’s much-publicized deterioration, Wagner saw a need to realign her orbit.

“I was a ‘Doc Martens, grunge-era kid’ from Portland, Oregon, ‘the dream of the ‘90s,’” she teased. “I have moved here to start ‘the dream of the ‘20s’ in Astoria. But I was lucky to be in Portland during that time.”

The coronavirus pandemic “was a game changer. It led me to examine why I was in Portland,” she said. Astoria beckoned, with one criteria: “I needed to make sure I had a big enough house to have friends visit.”

Wagner is eager to applaud her universe. “It has been a wild life,” she reflected. “I am blessed with all these people who believe in my work.”