Alex Garcia: Portraits in Egg Tempera

Published on Dec. 5th 2007

Egg tempera isn’t nearly as common as oil paints these days, but it’s still the medium of choice for Alex Garcia, a San Antonio portrait artist.

Since egg tempera dries fast, Garcia uses many cross-hatched strokes of color to build up layers upon layers of medium—and although it’s certainly a long process, you can see the beautiful results in each and every painting.

Be Still by Alex Garcia

Be Still, above, is one of Garcia’s larger egg tempera paintings at 16″ by 20″.

Just visually, I love the solid, rich colors in this piece; and of course the flawless details throughout. If you’re interested, you can see some absolutely amazing work-in-process photos of this particular painting here on Garcia’s website.

The background of this next painting shows the hatching I mentioned a bit more clearly. Since egg tempera won’t blend directly on the surface of the painting, that’s the only way to achieve gradients and variations in color.

El Viejo by Alex Garcia

But going beyond technique, I was also fascinated by the thoughtfulness, the gravitas, present in most of Garcia’s paintings.

It’s more than just a mood—each portrait hints at a deeper story, with clues to those stories hidden just inside the boundaries of the frame.

La Despedida by Alex Garcia

In La Despedida, a young man gazes outward, far past the morning sun, watching. . . something. . . slip away. Behind him in the shadowed doorway, she looks down, seeing nothing but the past.

And although I can’t know for sure, it seems that wherever he’s going, whatever he’s doing—he must do it alone.

Fore more fantastic paintings by Alex Garcia, visit www.alexgarciafineart.com.

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