Looking at this painting we first of all notice two chicken eggs in a frying pan and broken shells scattered

underneath...breakfast on its way!

And who is carrying those eggs to the hearth?

Why, it’s the chicken herself!

So begins a new ‘chicken’ tale – better something ‘plain’ for yourself than ‘golden’ for others.

There is a chicken called Ryaba in the Russian fairytale of the same name who surprises grandpa and

grandma by laying a ‘golden egg’. This wonderful egg could not be broken by either the old woman or

the old man but only by an insignificant little mouse - apparently a reference to the natural cycle of night

replacing day.

In the artist’s earlier work – Sunrise by the Ocean – the egg is a symbol of the beginning of life on earth:

the world is created from a Cosmic Egg laid in the primeval ocean by a giant bird.