So why eggs? If you have followed my work over the years you know that one of my recurring subjects are broken eggs. I suppose if I could write about why I like to paint eggs I’d be a writer and not a painter, but there are a few ideas that come to mind: In some sense when I paint an egg what I’m really painting is light and the wonderful way it reflects and refracts off the shell and through the albumen onto the yolk. I find light to be as mysterious in art as it is in physics and light has always been an important consideration in my work. Also, I like the “painterliness” of an egg: the strange viscosity of albumen, the delicate grays of the shell and the shiny yolk. I like the sense of alchemy between paint and subject or, more specifically, between paint and albumen—of almost changing paint into albumen and vice versa. I suppose the egg is almost an excuse for me to move paint in a certain way. And of course an egg has many symbolic and metaphoric meanings in many different cultures. It is a rich subject that belies its common status. I didn’t paint the egg because it was beautiful, but rather it became beautiful to me because I painted it. I hope it is the same for my viewers.

This series came about because I wanted a group of eggs to be seen as one work, rather than piece by piece via my blog. Together I think the visual rhythms, of tone and atmosphere and light, become more apparent and thus more powerful when seen together.

Enjoy.

Duane Keiser