Original artwork description:

'Carp 1' is a small, decorative, egg tempera painting, made using traditional medieval European techniques - hand ground egg tempera paint and water gilding on an oak panel.

When the first lockdown due to Covid was announced, we were a week away from the family holiday of a lifetime in Japan. We still hope to make that journey one day, but for now we can only dream of the far east. This little fish, with its nod to oriental style, was a result of that dreaming.

The egg tempera paint was made using traditional medieval European painting techniques, by hand grinding dry pigments in egg yolk and water. This paint was applied to an oak panel, prepared with a white gesso ground and water gilded with real gold leaf onto a red bole base.

The bright orange paint, shading into red and glazed with transparent red, was applied over the gold leaf and scratched through, using the technique known by early Italian painters as 'sgraffito', to produce a glittering effect in the scales along the fish's back, as if they were twinkling through the water in the light.

The use of complementary colours - ultramarine blue touches in the watery background and cadmium orange in the fish - means that they vibrate against each other, while the gold leaf glows on the deep black background.

The painting is signed and dated on the reverse and has a d-ring attached so that it is ready to hang as it is, although it could also be framed to make it more imposing. Unframed, it can equally well stand on a mini easel on a desk, shelf or piano.

Materials used:

oak panel, gesso, gold leaf, egg tempera paint, pigments

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