"Afternoon Flight" egg tempera on panel, 2023, 24"x32 1/2"
"Afternoon Flight" (detail)
The
surface of an egg tempera is alive! It changes almost
hourly in the natural light of a north window. It looks different in
the morning than evening, cloudy days bring out warmth, and so on. That
is one reason I never offered my egg tempera paintings to museums,
where
they become trapped in hard, cold, low voltage, high kelvin
temperature light. Egg tempera, or "seco" panels in the early Italian
renaissance glowed in dim churches with a heavenly-like luminance.
The raven appeared one afternoon, I almost heard a quiet rustle of feathers. I rarely put animals in my paintings, because they tend to look "stuck in", unless they are in the composition or actually present nearby. I resisted, but after drawing in the raven shape, I immediately heard a chorus of ravens outside, and took that as a good omen. Hauntingly, after I completed this painting, the ranch under my uncle's stewardship began to unravel, as if the famous quote of Edgar Allen Poe's raven, "Never More" had predicted the demise of my grandfather, Peter Hurd's beloved Sentinel Ranch. This valley was my childhood paradise. We are the last of the Hurd family left on the ranch. I feel particularly good about my nine month artistic journey. Now the artist steps aside... We have signed reproductions available.
The raven appeared one afternoon, I almost heard a quiet rustle of feathers. I rarely put animals in my paintings, because they tend to look "stuck in", unless they are in the composition or actually present nearby. I resisted, but after drawing in the raven shape, I immediately heard a chorus of ravens outside, and took that as a good omen. Hauntingly, after I completed this painting, the ranch under my uncle's stewardship began to unravel, as if the famous quote of Edgar Allen Poe's raven, "Never More" had predicted the demise of my grandfather, Peter Hurd's beloved Sentinel Ranch. This valley was my childhood paradise. We are the last of the Hurd family left on the ranch. I feel particularly good about my nine month artistic journey. Now the artist steps aside... We have signed reproductions available.