M Ryding Artworks
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Egg Tempera

Working in egg tempera is a messy and many layered kind of meditation. I have come to have a great deal of respect for the monks, artisans and scribes who worked for years on icons and manuscripts. They followed strict formulas for both the technique and the subjects. Symbolism was embedded in the colors and shapes that were used as well as in the images depicted.  


I have not acquired the self discipline and meticulous attention to detail that is required to religiously follow the rules, but I certainly enjoy the intensity and luminosity of the egg tempera medium. And I find the process the grinding of the colors and the mixing of the egg yolk to be such a mechanical and stepped process that it becomes a kind of meditation.

Egg tempera as a medium was at its peak in Medieval Europe. Most of the subjects were religious (since most of the money for artwork at that time was coming from the church). Altar pieces and icons of the saints were the medieval painters' bread and butter.

I've done on a series I called "Everyday Saints."  I like to use this ancient technique to showcase the kind of people we see everyday but sometimes we don't really see them. These are ordinary people trying to live out their values. When working in this seemingly tedious medium, my mind is free to think about just what it is that motivates these extraordinary/ordinary people.
Waiting Madonna
St Georgia Rides the Dragon
Thinking of Dragons at the Drive-Through Window
Olmsted Ophelia
Through a Glass Darkly
The Dog Rescuer
Promised Land, 45mph
Ali as St Nick, The Giver

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"Creativity makes a leap, then looks to see where it is."  Mason Cooley

When we look at a particular work of northwest coast art and see the shape of it, we are only looking at its after-ife.  Its real life is the movement by which it got to be that shape.  Bill Reid, Haida carver

"Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making of something after it is found"  James Russell Lowell, American Poet

"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing."
Mark Rothko, artist
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  • Home
  • About
  • Encaustic Medium
    • Setting Up Encaustic
    • Painting with Encaustic
  • Portfolio
    • Encaustic >
      • Floating World
      • Encaustic Landscapes
      • All Nature SIngs
      • Abstract - Mixed Media
      • Beached
      • Small & Square
    • Older Work >
      • Searching for Beauty
      • Collage
      • National Park Series
  • Contact
  • Make Good