“Painting the night lit by the moon or the stars has always fascinated me. Often I am drawing outdoors at night as a means to remember the colours of a moonlit sky or the deep dark blue of a starry sky. I am always painting from my drawings, usually in egg tempera on panels that have been prepared in a traditional way with layers of fine gesso. I want my paintings to be small portable objects depicting such ‘daily epiphanies‘. In that sense one could call them ‘icons of nature’. “
— Heidrun Rathgeb
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We are delighted to present a body of small-scaled works by Heidrun Rathgeb in our Gallery Cabinet. Living and working near Lake Constance in southwestern Germany, the surrounding light and landscape deeply informs her intimate egg tempera paintings, luminous and patiently layered. Working from plein air sketches that she calls her “daily epiphanies,” she translates lived moments (never photographs) into layers of color and light that evoke both connection and devotion. Influenced by early Sienese painters as well as modern artists like Winifred Nicholson and Paula Modersohn-Becker, Rathgeb approaches painting as an act of attention and care, drawing inspiration from her family, home, and long hikes through the Alps, Norway, and Scotland.
Heidrun Rathgeb (b. 1967) received her MFA in London at the Slade School of Fine Art, after attending the Byam Shaw School of Art. She has held recent solo exhibitions at Sea View, Los Angeles, US (2025); Gallery Sofie Van de Velde, Antwerp, BE (2025), and John Martin Gallery, London, UK (2024).
