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Lora Arbrador
ALLi Author Member
Location: United States of America (the)
Genres: Art & Crafts, Memoir
Skills: Speaking Engagement/Lecture, Reading/Literary Event, Press/Media Interview
At the age of 19, Lora Arbrador was given a one-page recipe for making egg tempera paint by a college professor who admitted he had no knowledge of the technique. Like a musician with a strong affinity for a particular instrument, Arbrador found her creative home in egg tempera.
To financially support her art practice, Arbrador became a registered nurse. Nursing has been the inspiration for many of her paintings, including the series Ways of Dying: A Chronicle of the AIDS Epidemic. Her painting from that series, Don’t Go My Friend: The Death of John Walsh, MD, won first place at the Art and Healing exhibit at Artwest Gallery (Wyoming) in 1997.
Arbrador became fascinated by the history of egg tempera and, in 1995 was invited to speak at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. Her lecture there has evolved into two presentations: “What is Egg Tempera?” and “A Taste of Egg Tempera History.” In 1997, Arbrador co-founded the Society of Tempera Painters which was modeled after the 1901 Society of Painters in Tempera in England.
Arbrador has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the US, including South Bend Regional Museum of Art (Indiana), Wenatchee Valley College Art Gallery (Washington), and the Bade Museum of the Pacific School of Religion (California).
Arbrador shares her love of egg tempera painting with young children, professional artists and other curious people.
When not painting or practicing nursing, Arbrador discovers new plants for her shade garden and learns songs from the Great American Songbook. Her home studio is in San Francisco, California, USA.
Lora Arbrador's books
Art & Love: My Life Illuminated in Egg Tempera
The project started as a coffee table art book but evolved into a full-blown memoir, as many of the paintings depict scenes from my life.
Two main themes thread through the narrative. The first is my struggle to learn the egg tempera painting technique, which is beautiful, but baffling. The other is my journey to understand my sensual nature and difficulty in forming a stable, romantic relationship.
The book spans decades in which I was a flower child in the Berkeley counterculture of the 1960s, became a registered nurse to support my art practice in the 1970s, moved to the woods of Maine where I built my own teepee. In the 1980s I was a research nurse during the AIDS epidemic and many of my paintings portray, those horrific times. I also joined a commune which turned out to be a cult, became pregnant, abandoned and homeless. Every page is illustrated, either by a drawing or painting of mine, a photograph, or other image. There is a bonus chapter, "A Taste of Egg Tempera History."