Thursday, March 15, 2007

Renaissance Egg Tempura Painting Returns to Reflect Italian Heritage

The ANNOTICO Report

Egg tempera was prevalent in the Middle Ages and used by nearly all the Italian Renaissance painters. It is made by adding powdered pigments (mostly metal oxides) into egg yolk. Sometimes other ingredients such as honey or milk are added, but it's that stubborn egg yolk that makes the difference. It dries quickly, adheres firmly and, unlike oil paint that darkens or yellows with age, retains true colors.

Thomas MacPherson, an art teacher at the State University College at Geneseo, uses the historic application of this medium and its association with religious icon paintings to tell the story of his ethnic heritage.

 

MacPherson's  father was a Scot who died a hero in World War II. Thomas subsequently grew up among his mother's large extended Italian family, and most of this exhibition is devoted to them and the quirks and eccentricities of multi-generational Italian Americans.

 

 

Geneseo Art Instructor Explores His Italian Roots

 

Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Shirley Dawson

March 11, 2007

Have you ever tried scraping dried egg yolk off a breakfast plate? You've discovered a component for one of the great historic tools of art: egg tempera painting.

Egg tempera was prevalent in the Middle Ages and used by nearly all the Italian Renaissance painters. It is made by adding powdered pigments (mostly metal oxides) into egg yolk. Sometimes other ingredients such as honey or milk are added, but it's that stubborn egg yolk that makes the difference. It dries quickly, adheres firmly and, unlike oil paint that darkens or yellows with age, retains true colors.

Egg tempera painting was largely abandoned after the invention of oil paints but was rediscovered and used extensively by 20th-century realism painters including Thomas Benton and Andrew Wyeth.

Now the Joy Gallery has an entire roomful of egg tempera paintings on view. The show is called "The Italian American Family Album Installation," and it is the work of Thomas MacPherson.

MacPherson, an art teacher at the State University College at Geneseo, uses the historic application of this medium and its association with religious icon paintings to tell the story of his ethnic heritage. His father was a Scot who died a hero in World War II. Stop the War I Want to Get Off and War Hero Monument are altars to the father he must have barely known. In them, portraits of his father are encased in wood tabernacles or boxes and surrounded by military medals, toy soldiers and chess pieces.

MacPherson subsequently grew up among his mother's large extended Italian family, and most of this exhibition is devoted to them and the quirks and eccentricities of multi-generational Italian Americans. The paintings of grandparents, aunts, uncles and a small blond-haired boy who must be MacPherson himself are encrusted with symbols of every kind and stripe. Religion plays a main role. Jesus often hovers in the background, women are portrayed as saints complete with halos, and plastic charms of the saints dangle from nearly every picture frame. These paintings are richly detailed, often humorous and full of historic nuance.

Scattered around the gallery space are pieces of furniture  grandfather's old stuffed chair, a desk full of inconsequential mail, a radio that plays Perry Como and Mario Lanza  the "installation" part of the program. Building one cohesive environmental statement with these objects would have been more effective.

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Shirley Dawson co-owned Dawson Gallery, spent years as a practicing artist and now writes about art.

 

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