THE GOLDEN EYE

Julio Reyes captures poignant moments on the precipice of change.

- MICHAEL PEARCE

It is true, without untruth, certain, and most true’ that Julio Reyes is the greatest living master of egg tempera. During the isolation of the pandemic, he was somehow blessed by the curse of Covid-kissed solitude that dragged others down but raised him to the height of excellence, for his recent works are quiet miracles of memory, a bright and innocent world of boys and girls in sunlight, created in his alembic studio, and born from mediation and adaptation.

The real magic of his medium is in the finish, which is a uniquely delicate balance of layered strength and softness, and there is something of the alchemist in Reyes’ preparation. The beginning of the work is a metaphor for birth and death, and life and light, and it is a ritual of preparation, of silence, of reverence. Standing quietly in his studio, he cracks a fragile egg, separating the lunar white from the golden sun of yolk. He cups the yolk in his palm, and the white slips away, then he gently pierces the delicate membrane with the point of a knife and lets the yellow liquid leak from the sack into a small bowl. He stirs in a little distilled water, and mixes this medium with small scoops of pigment pulled from a rainbow row of beautiful bags of color, mixing some of the smooth paint he will use to create the dreamy summer world of memory.

Slowly, an image emerges on his easel. It is an elemental scene distilled in the platonic palace of metaphors and allegories—as things are in the heavens above, they are here below in Reyes’ studio. A collective memory of a child floating in the flow of a rippled river, his face gently held above the cool water by warm and golden sunshine. Delicate and fragile, the dreamy spirits of airy lacewings and fireflies drift over him, carried in the currents of the wind.