Zoe Dorelli

Artist: Zoe Dorelli

Title : The Chichester EGG

About :

“It was a real honour to be involved in such an exciting and worthy event. Although artistically quite a challenge, it appealed to my love of miniature painting and gold.

In looking for inspiration from the great Faberge, I discovered a stunning example in Lapis Lasuli and gold and decided make this the basic colour theme. With further research I came across the extraordinary, Market Cross landmark at the heart of Chichester’s town centre. It’s octagonal structure happily fitting the egg shape, with beautifully ornate stonework able to enhance the gold areas with lapis blue for the sky. I decided to show the facets at different stages of finish to allude to the construction of the new youth theatre. 

The plaster egg is coated with several layers of traditional gesso ground (used by artisans for centuries) then sanded to a fine polish.The drawing is silver point (literally using a rod of silver filed to a point) and for the colour, egg tempera paint, which seemed appropriate and good for detail. Finally 23ct shell gold was used (ground gold in Gum Arabic) and polished with an agate burnisher to give a stone like quality and plenty of shine.”

www.zoedorelli.co.uk   Instagram @zoedorelli