Art Talk: Guest Blogger, @laurabellamy

I am very excited to introduce today's guest blogger, @laurabellamy.
She blogs In Which.... posts on Hive.

Laura commented on my last Art Talk post on Egg Tempera saying her dad painted in egg tempera. Awesome! A modern egg tempera painter.

Here is her post about her dad and egg tempera. Enjoy.

Out of the North

I remember the day my dad came home with several dozen eggs, and told us that we weren't going to eat them.

Confused, I watched as my dad began taking eggs out and attempting to separate the egg yolk from the white and the membrane. When I asked him what on earth he was doing and why, he explained that he was trying out a new medium for his paintings called "egg tempera."

You see, Dad was a painter. But not just any painter, one that was constantly inspired by the artists of classic periods such as the Renaissance. He wasn't interested in modern artists, or in trying to create work in that style. Dad favored a return to classicism, and wanted to created works of art that showed attention to detail and evoked real emotion.

The Relic

After years of looking for his favorite medium -- going through acrylics, oils, and even watercolor -- he finally latched onto egg tempera. It took some experimentation to get his routine down when it came to mixing the pigments. No art teacher he spoke with knew how to do it. Egg tempera may have been popular when Raphael was starting out, it may have been a favored medium of Botticelli (it was, after all, the method of painting for his famous "Birth of Venus.") And his favorite artist of all time, Andrew Wyeth, tried to revive it as well. But it just wasn't often used anymore. The technique had long since been replaced by other, perhaps even easier, methods.

So, after much muttering, grumbling, and yes, occasionally cursing, Dad finally came up with a way of separating the yolk and mixing the pigments that worked perfectly for him.

Drifters

Every so often over the years, we would sit in the kitchen together while he took out bowls, tiny spoons, mixing agents, and jars of finely ground pigments, and we would talk about art while he prepared his mixtures for whatever he was working on at the time. He would tell me about what future paintings he had in mind -- most of which he was never able to complete in his lifetime. We would compare favorite artists, and specific works of genius. Once in a while, he would let one of us kids create a single brush stroke in his paintings.

January Still

Dad never became the Raphael of his day. His paintings were best for a time we don't currently seem to live in. Many could recognize his skill, but few could see past the current trends of the day to understand what he wanted to do. When he passed away in October of 2019, his paintings were displayed at the front of the chapel. Now, each of his four kids has one of his paintings -- "Home of the Wind" is mine. We miss him, but like so many artists before him, his work will live on.