Tsuchinshan-ATLAS over the Blue Ridge Mountains

by Kaysha Siemens

This is a painting in honor of the beautiful comet that visited our planet in the evening sky just after sunset for a few nights about a month ago. It is also a painting in honor of portents, of doom and hope, and of the resilience of my home (Western NC) that has gone through so much recently.

It is painted in egg tempera, a medium that as many of you know has been showing up in my work more and more over the past few years. Egg tempera predates oil painting as a historical medium, and is made from scratch with pigment, water, and egg yolk (and if you’ve ever tried to was a dish that had egg yolk dry on it, you will know how good a binder it is). It is difficult to convey the full beauty of it in a photo, but in person egg tempera paintings have a unique and characteristic luminosity that is different from other types of paint. Despite what one may guess, it is quite tough (and only gets tougher over time), and can be framed and displayed without glass just like oil and acrylic paintings. I finish the surface of my egg tempera paintings with Renaissance Wax, a product developed specifically for conservators, to give them extra protection.

The painting is 4×6 inches, framed in an elegant silvertone frame. The frame can hang or sit, and has outer dimensions of 9×11 inches.

To see more of my work, visit my website at www.kayshasiemens.com, and follow me @kayshasiemens on Twitter and Instagram.

$550 $550

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Kaysha Siemens

I was born and raised in Canada, and now make my home near Asheville, NC, USA. My work is primarily figurative and narrative. I work mainly in oil and graphite. My current primary focus is Mnemosyne, an ongoing project inspired by Greek myth.

My goal is the object of beauty, but that goal is achieved through engagement in process, and neither aim is worthwhile without meaning and intention. I seek to talk about the ordinary with the language of story, to arrest with exquisite imagery, and ultimately to leave viewers with a feeling, a lingering sense, that they have had a brush with the sublime.