SUNNY SIDE UP
OIL ON BOARD
12 x 16 INCHES
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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.
