I am not a traditional realist...

Tomato Basket   oil/canvas   16 x 20 x 1.5

There, I said it.  Acceptance of my artistic direction.  Said with a sense of loss.  And also with a sense of relief.  I so admire traditional realism.  But after years of wiping out chairs upon which the models rest, I am ready to face my own direction with fortitude.  I have tried painting the barn behind the horse, the curtain behind the still life and the trees behind the model.  My sense of aesthetics has urged me to wipe them all out.  Yes, a light source matters to some degree.  It helps to describe my realistic forms, to ward them away from flatness.  But the design approach of dark and light patterns is where my thrill is....those patterns that exist and move and relate without regard to the subject matter.

"Tomato Basket" took quite a while to paint,  I remember being confused by my own desires being in conflict with the window behind the basket.  The tomatoes literally rotted while I figured it all out.

I am what I am and that's all that I am........Popeye

Farmers Markets...

Tomato Basket   oil/canvas  16 x 20 x 1.5

are in full swing now and need our support.  Since the 1950's, chemical farming has altered the way food is grown in our country.  High-tech farming has lessened the quality of the foods and depleted the soil causing lower nutrient crops as well as increasing erosion.  The yield per acre has tripled.  Labor has been cut by 2/3.  But energy use has quadrupled.  Not a good thing....all sponsored by the petrochemical industry.  According to Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins of the Institute for Food and Development Policy in San Francisco, the myth of world hunger has also been propagated by this same industrial outlook.  Rather, hunger is not the result of poor production, but the result of social and political policies that cause farmers to plant commercial one-crop products that are exported for monetary gain, leaving the local and regional communities with little to nothing.

I have spent the past three weeks painting fruits, vegetables and other food items.  I cannot paint without thinking of the subject and what this particular experience has to teach.

Surprises...

Tomato Basket   oil/canvas   16 x 20 x 1.5

I love surprises....just a bit of something that breaks through the ordinary. I never read programs at the theater, for example. I don't want to about the actors' real lives, at least not before the show. I want to believe the illusion that they present on stage. I rarely make the same meal twice....and when I do, it is usually a disappointment. That is why I paint like I do. Although the subject matter is concrete, I try to maneuver throughout the painting making snap judgments and relying, hopefully, on a more-or-less practiced knowledge of the design elements and principles. (The opposite, of course, being photo-realism, which allows for no surprises at all.....the goal being for the resultant work to look exactly like the photo).

"Tomato Basket" is a painting that never quite made it out of choppy water. I never ever felt all that comfortable at any stage of the painting. Uneasiness. Insecurity. I reached what I considered to be a stopping point, confident that I had attempted all possible solutions within my reach. OK. It was hung in the dining room during holiday season because of its color but each time I walked by, I questioned whether or not I should have another go at it. Our ASA critique was last evening....so I toted it along wearing my thick skin in hopes that other solutions might present themselves. Problem areas to me were not problem areas to the leader whose aesthetic sense is one I trust. Problem areas that were questioned by others were not problematic to me. I was surprised. And I will let sleeping dogs lie, so to speak. Unless, that is, you have another solution that has not yet been considered...