Meet Granby Artist Laura Eden At The Open Studio Tour This Weekend

Granby artist Laura Eden will display more than three decades of experience as a full-time artist when she opens her studio to the public this weekend as part of the Granby Artists Association Open Studio Tour.

Eden welcomes visitors to her home studio at 11 Juniper Drive in Granby, letting them see how her many works appear when hung on walls throughout her house. She said the set up gives people ideas for hanging her art in their own homes and provides plenty of display space.

Eden is excited to welcome members of the local community to her home, letting them see her completed work as well as an ongoing painting demonstration she works on throughout the open studio weekend.

“It’s really fun,” Eden said of the weekend-long event.

Eden mainly works in egg tempera, the second-oldest painting medium, creating her own paint with a combination of water, egg yolk and pigment. The advantages of egg tempera are many, producing a very vivid and long-lasting work.

“It lets me get my work out from under glass,” she said. “It’s very luminous. It’s very permanent.”

The physical properties of egg tempera allow light to pass through the layers of paint on the canvas — a wood or Masonite panel coated with traditional gesso — and lets Eden work from light to dark as well as dark to light, which wasn’t the case when she was primarily a watercolor painter. The medium also lets Eden keep working without having to wait for paint to dry.

While the change of her primary medium was a big change and humbling at first, the result of her work in egg tempera is a bright, striking image full of contrast that draws eyes to the painting.

Eden’s art education began at a young age. Her mother Pat Eden, an art school graduate, and grandmother Louise Slayden, who worked in watercolor, acrylics and oils, both encouraged Laura Eden’s early interest in art.

“Since I was 5, I had an interest,” she said. “I feel very fortunate. I’ve just always known [what I’ve wanted to do].”

Her formal education included two years a piece at Syracuse and UConn, allowing her the opportunity to work with many more professors than the average art student and get more varied input about her art. After a four-year stint as an art teacher at the Watkinson School in Hartford, Eden has worked as a full-time artist ever since. She still teaches classes locally, working with students in watercolors at Holcomb Farm.

Besides a welcoming home full of art, from inexpensive giclee prints with prices starting at $40 all the way up to large watercolors and egg tempera works, Eden will offer homemade hors d’oeuvres to her visitors this weekend.

The Granby Artists Association’s Open Studio Tour features 20 local artists and takes place at a host of locations throughout town from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. .