This painting is part of my collection of pieces inspired by Ancient Egypt. See the others here. The rich history of Ancient Egypt in my opinion, is unrivalled. The civilisation lasted close to 3000 years, preserving the religion and art style for the majority of that time. No civilisation compares today, considering that civilisation as we understand it has only been around for 5,000 years, that isn’t hard to believe.

Inspiration for art can literally come from anywhere. And I love it. When I was younger, I struggled with that question, ‘what do I paint?’ Shall I paint flowers, or landscapes? Na. How about people and faces? Na. I tried a few things including various styles of patterns, cubism, geometric, abstract. At the end of the day, what you paint has to come from an interest or passion within that has nothing to do with what other people are doing, or what they want.

The civilisation has always fascinated me and its timeline. I did my research and put together a blog on it, see here. The stories, colours and religion then went onto inspire a few pieces. See here for the others.

The Timeline of Ancient Egypt

The Timeline is a geometrically organised piece of art, depicting the nine major time periods of the civilisation. These include the following periods:

Early Egypt
The Old Kingdom
The first intermediate period
The Middle Kingdom
The second intermediate period
The New Kingdom
The third intermediate period
The late period
Ptolemaic Egypt

The events of each period inspired the style in which it was painted. The ‘Kingdoms’ were the major periods of the civilisation, when Egypt was united under one pharaoh and there was marked prosperity. These were painted with some reference to what happened in those periods of prosperity.

The Old Kingdom is represented with pyramid shapes in threes. The Middle Kingdom is represented in hieroglyphs as this is when the classic language was developed. The New Kingdom is painted in rich patterns inspired by Tutankhamun’s tomb and represents the ‘Golden Age’ of the civilisation.

The Early Egyptian period, before the Old Kingdom is sponged in light blue as this is the start of the civilisation, a united Egypt under Pharaoh Narmer. I chose the light blue because it has a light positive feel about it, however it wasn’t a great time period so there are no defining artistic markers.

The three intermediate periods in between the Kingdoms were sponged in dark blue as they were periods of turmoil and a broken Egypt for various reasons.

The Late Period marks the end of dynastic Egypt, ending with dynasty 31 before Alexander the Great took over. This period was marked with two dynasties led by the Persian Empire. This inspired the art work with the dots, as Persian Empire artwork from that time depicts the beards and helmets of men with round dots.

Ptolemaic Egypt was quite prosperous and they maintained elements of the Ancient Egyptian religion and culture. They cartouches depicted are the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra. All the men were called Ptolemy and the women were named one of three names, one being Cleopatra. The famous Cleopatra VII was the last Queen of Egypt before it was taken over by Rome.

I thoroughly enjoyed painting this piece, painting it in the order of time so it would sit well with the video content. The colour palette of blue, red and gold is common throughout the whole collection.

Be inspired by anything that takes your fancy, let the subject matter come from a real place of passion and interest.