Phyl McGrath studied at
the
Edinburgh College of Art in the
1960s and with the Open
College of the Arts in the
1980s. After a lifetime of
painting inspiration came late
and unexpectedly at a small
art school on the Norfolk
Broads where she happened to
study with
William Calladine President
of the Guild of Norwich
Painters who in turn was tutored
by the international expert in
Dutch art Jan Hendrick
Eversen.
She was totally inspired by the
idea of going back in time for
hundreds of years and tracing
the ingenious technique of oil
painting used by the early
masters in the Netherlands.
How did they produce their
glowing paintings? Jan van
Eyck (1390-1441) from Bruges
was the foremost painter at
that time in Northern Europe.
Antonello of Messina
(1430-1479) certainly had
contact with the early
painters in the Netherlands and
Karl Van Mander wrote in his
Lives of the Illustrious
Netherlandish and German
painters (1603-1604) how Jan
van Eyck had originally worked
in tempura but
eventually improved on the
lustre of his paintings and
produced a more brilliant
finish. This secret recipe was
kept hidden for several
centuries until at the end of
the 18th century many of the
details of his technique
finally emerged from Bruges.
However following a visit to
Bruges in 2010 she found that
the mystery
of the glowing paintings from
Northern Europe has not been
completely solved. Using the
known facts about Jan van
Eyck's methods she has
achieved considerable success
but continues to experimant in
her work.
Click on an
image to see enlargement and
details. | Buy securely
on-line with 256bit high grade
encryption. |
