Golden River

Description

Rupert Muldoon paints one stretch of the River Avon, the one he walks most days near his home in Wiltshire. It is the same river Turner and Constable painted, though he leaves the picturesque views to them and goes instead to the damp, overlooked corners: the reeds and still pools where the light is less obvious. The results have a glow that oil paint cannot reach.

He works in egg tempera, a medium largely abandoned since the Renaissance, grinding pigment into egg yolk and building each painting in thin, translucent layers. Paint is laid on, scraped back, washed off and burnished, then sealed with wax, which is where that inner light comes from.