Original artwork description:

'High Tea' is an egg tempera painting with water gilding on a gessoed oak panel.

This frog first appeared in my painting, 'On the Ground, They Crawl Unseen', where it is a minor character amongst many others. However, it seemed particularly appealing to me and I felt that it should take centre stage in its own picture so I made this little painting where it is given a gently humorous treatment.

The title, 'High Tea' is a pun. In the UK, 'high tea' can be used to mean an evening meal but here it refers to the fact that the fly in the picture is too high for the frog. The frog braces against the two golden stems of grass, straining upwards and stretching out his tongue for the fly, which sits, comfortably out of reach, on the bending head of one of the blades of grass.

The painting was made using traditional, medieval, European techniques. An oak panel was prepared with smooth, white gesso. This was coated with red bole, a kind of clay, along the blades of grass and these were then covered with two layers of gold leaf and subsequently burnished to an even, high sheen. The paint was made by hand grinding dry pigments in egg yolk and water.

The small painting has a narrow, exposed, wood border (included in the dimensions given) so that it can be displayed unframed, for example on a mini easel. It can also be framed to make it more imposing. It is signed and dated on the reverse and has a d-ring attached so that it is ready to hang.

Materials used:

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

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