Art & Love - by Lora Arbrador

Book Synopsis

Art & Love is the memoir of a woman's quest to master the ancient art of egg tempera painting, gain confidence as an artist and find lasting love.

It's 1966 and unaware that a counterculture tsunami is brewing, Lora Arbrador arrives in Berkeley, California where she is introduced to egg tempera, a painting technique that combines colorful pigments with egg yolk. Lora falls in love with this luminous medium but cannot find a teacher to unravel its mysteries. Her love life is similarly marked with many failures.

Art and love converge when she falls for a tender, charismatic artist, but after their eight-month immersion in the great museums of Europe, Lora follows him into a commune that she later realizes has become a cult.

Set against a backdrop of huge cultural changes - from the counterculture of the 1960s and back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, to the AIDS epidemic and sex underground of the 1980s - Art & Love is a journey of creative and emotional fulfillment that captivates, educates and entertains the reader.

Arbrador's stunning artwork enhances the narrative, inspiring those grappling with their own artistic expression and longing for love.

Includes her bonus essay "Which Came First? A Taste of Egg Tempera History."

--Lora Arbrador

Review Quotes

Editor's Pick - BookLife Review by Publishers Weekly

Art & Love: My Life Illuminated in Egg Tempera

Pull quotes:

"Alive with her insights, passions, and a personal history that connects to urgent cultural and feminist history."

"A gorgeous, heartfelt examination and celebration."

"Bold, inviting paintings abound... The result is inspiring and informative, a book to be pored over."

FULL REVIEW:

Abrador's luminous book invites readers into her life, art, and determination to master the ancient art of egg tempera painting, a technique dating from before the era of oil painting that blends "colorful pigments with egg yolk." For Abrador, this was, like many obsessions, love at first sight, beginning in a college class and soon inspiring her quest to master an art most have never heard of--and few were able to teach. (Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World is a modern example that showcases the "ethereal" quality and "inner glow.") Art & Love isn't quite an exegesis of her work in that medium, and it isn't quite a memoir, nor a comprehensive history of the art itself. Instead, it blends vital elements of all of these and more, coming together into a gorgeous, heartfelt examination and celebration. It's all beautifully illustrated with Abrador's own work, while the prose is alive with her insights, passions, and a personal history that connects to urgent cultural and feminist history.

Abrador was a witness and participant in watershed moments of the late 20th century, among them the Bay Area's countercultural flowering, where hippie culture was "no paradise for women," and the AIDS epidemic, which Abrador captures in a touching essay and intimate portraiture. Abrador is present in every paragraph, and the result echoes what a patron once said of her art: "There is pain but there is hope." That's Art & Love in a nutshell. Her personal accounts of life in fraught times--she has been a nurse for 50 years--are supplemented by introductions to paintmaking, a celebration of the slowness of egg tempera work, a brisk breakdown of the history of egg tempera throughout the Neolithic Era, the Bronze Age, the Byzantine Empire, and onward.

Bold, inviting paintings abound: portraits of family and friends; radiant yoga nudes; earthy couplings; frank and surprising depictions of the body in surgery, menstruation, and other deeply human experiences. The result is inspiring and informative, a book to be pored over.

Takeaway: Beautiful, inspiring memoir of a life of egg-tempera painting.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

--Editor's Pick - BookLife Review by Publishers Weekly "BookLife" (6/16/2025 12:00:00 AM)

"Packed with artistic and personal revelations, Art & Love is exquisitely detailed, personally absorbing, and artistically relevant and powerful." - Midwest Book Review

--Midwest Book Review

About the Author

At theage of 19, Lora Arbrador was given a recipe for making egg tempera paint by a college professor who admitted 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 support her art practice, Arbrador became a registered nurse and the medical world has been the inspiration for many of her paintings, including the series, Ways of Dying: A Chronicle of the AIDS Epidemic. Her painting, Don't Go My Friend: The Death of John Walsh, MD, won first place at the Art and Healing exhibit at Artwest Gallery. Captivated by the fascinating history of egg tempera, Arbrador was invited to speak at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in 1995. That lecture has evolved into two presentations: What is Egg Tempera? and Which Came First? 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. Her first book, A History of Roman Calligraphy, is housed in the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center of the San Francisco Public Library. Arbrador is the former Editorial Director of NurseWeek magazine. Arbrador has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the US, including South Bend Regional Museum of Art, Wenatchee Valley College Art Gallery and the Bade Museum of the Pacific School of Religion. She shares her love of egg tempera with young children, professional artists and other curious people. Arbrador's studio is in San Francisco, California.