Welsh Artist Jen Delyth - Egg Tempera Paintings

Jen Delyth is a self taught artist, who enjoys working in different mediums, including Egg Tempera , digital art techniques including her DVD "Beyond the Ninth Wave" animation and video project (DVD available here), and fusions of traditional and contemporary mediums.

Traditional Egg Tempera technique was used for sacred art iconography for many centuries... Many layers of natural pigments & Egg yolk paint are built up to create a brightly pigmented painting, with a translucent quality, upon a naturally gessoed wood birch board. (see painting process here)

Jen Delyth: "Egg Tempera is a beautiful organic medium, suitable for fine detail. I began painting with egg yolks and pigments when I discovered I was allergic to the solvents used in oil painting. In the early days of oil painting, artists would use egg tempera for the underpainting, glazing oils on top. This underpainting tends to use the most solvents, so I decided to work with the egg tempera paint to limit my interaction with the solvents... I loved the egg tempera paint, finish and process so much, I stopped glazing over in oils and it became my medium of choice!

I also enjoy using this medium in my own way... not limited to finely built up detailed strokes (which is traditional), but using large brushes in many layers to create visual textures. then using fine detail brush strokes, mixed with scraping through the paint with a dental tool.

Egg tempera photographs very well, being a non reflective medium (without the oils). I also enjoy working with my paintings, and digital collage, using photographs from nature through the image, which although subtle and impossible to see, gives me a connection to the place that inspired me whilst I painted. So for example, I may use a photograph of leaves to give a hint of texture to a Celtic knot border around the Tree of Life, or some beautiful lake water inside a triple spiral - evoking the mood and symbolism of the sacred feminine."