"Butterfly Sunday"
© Banjie Nicholas

The Litchfield Times wrote a nice piece on the egg tempera painting process and artist Banjie Nicholas. Egg tempera is an extremely old and long-lived natural process, used by Michaelangelo, and Botticelli, and has hooked Nicholas ever since she first tried it.

In addition to being an egg tempera and silverpoint artist, Nicholas is a certified bird rehabilitator, and chicken coop-keeper. Along with the article is a video of her mixing powdered pigments with egg yolks from her coop to create the painting medium. (Anyone who has accidentally broken a yolk while trying to make eggs over easy will admire Nicholas' delicate touch as she gently pinches a yolk with her fingers, and drops it into a cup, unbroken.) Paintings are developed slowly, building up color in small, cross-hatched brush strokes.

In her recent work, Nicholas has used a recurrent motif of paper dolls in addition to nests, landscapes, butterflies, and still life. There is a dream-like naturalism to the paintings--at once mysterious and familiar.

Banjie Nicholas will be participating in the Annual Northeast Juried Exhibition, which features 27 artists, from May 8 to June 13 at the Washington Art Association in Washington, CT. She will also be exhibiting at the Norfolk Library in Norfolk, CT from April 30 to June 3, and at the Minor Library in Roxbury, CT from June 19 to July 28.

~Lys