Unattached watercolor 9.5 x 13.5
Like so many people I have read about, I have been enormously taken with the notion of minimalism during the pandemic. Oh....I was already there, but to a lesser degree. At our house, we have been gradually reducing the collections of a lifetime: too many clothing items, too many dishes and casseroles (but I might need it sometime), too many garden pots and way too many tchotchkes. My work has aligned itself with the evolution of my belongings. I need less. For most of my artistic career, I have struggled with the notion of too many objects in the picture plane....chairs painted in, then painted out: still life paintings first painted as I see them, then gradually reduced to a couple of important relationships; shadows, interesting as they may be, were almost always eliminated. I am noticing the minimalism, more than ever, in my work. For me, the objects in the work become an interplay of subject (the tomatoes) and the ground (background). I am thrilled when these two notions interact in a series of rhythms. For the first time ever, I saw the reduction of my personal aesthetic needs reflected in this work. I was earlier satisfied. Done is done.
But never say never....I have included a shadow in this one. Do I enjoy it? Not particularly.
