01.05.2020: A few weeks ago I came across the grandiose and profound works of the Californian artist Julio Reyes and his paintings have cast a lasting spell over me. The paintings are of such profound aesthetics and for me almost unearthly beauty that I could lose myself in them for hours. He often paints with egg tempera and with very delicate strokes and fine brushes he creates works of enormous density and intimacy and with stunningly beautiful and differentiated colours. I particularly admire a series of paintings of red-haired people with freckles. People with red hair, fair skin and freckles have always had a special attraction for me too. For me, they often have something graceful but also fragile, like precious Chinese porcelain. These strong impressions gave me the impulse for this painting.
I won't try to copy Julio Reyes' technique - I can't achieve that anyway - but there are some things I would like to try to realise with my own technique: First of all, I would also like to paint a portrait of a red-haired person with fair skin and freckles. I have already tried this with my painting 'Sister my Sister' and noticed that it is not so easy to paint freckles in such a way that they look real and not artificial. Further on I want to try with my own means to bring more density and also something filigree into my painting. To do this, I will fall back on the technique I used in my painting 'Vertical Horizons' and some abstract paintings years ago and have hardly used since: glazing colours with fine brushstrokes and applied in superimposed layers. Finally, I'm trying to bring some of the stunningly beautiful colourfulness of Reyes' paintings into my painting as well. And for once I will be unfaithful to my long-term goal of more abstraction and go into more detail in this painting.
And by the way: I did not choose the name Aedan for this painting by chance. According to information from the internet, Aedan is the anglicised form of the Old Irish name Adohan, also Aidan, and means fire, the fiery one. I think an Irish name suits this figure and the meaning fits the powerful look of the eyes and the red hair.
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