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.

Ordinarily the auction process makes it difficult or almost impossible for a collector to buy a related group of paintings. So for the time being I’d like to offer these paintings as a single work and at a set price. This is the first time I’ve offered to sell a series like this. I would still keep them as individual paintings (rather than somehow having them framed within a single frame) so that a collector could have some flexibility in how they are displayed-- hanging together on the same wall, or perhaps spread throughout a house singularly or in smaller groups.

Enjoy.

Duane Keiser