Aerial Tabletop Bird's Eye Overhead

Citrus Slices   oil/canvas   11 x 14 x .5

These terms all refer to a viewpoint that is atypical for painting.  Shapes from above become so important.  As do their shadows.  I found that my usual process had to be discarded as harder edges were needed to help avoid visual confusion.  And so, I have gained even more respect for two painters that excel at this presentation:  Cleo Clark Williams from Canton, Ohio and Linda Tompkin from Copley, Ohio.  As my strength does not lie in detail, I felt completed weighed down my this small project.

But, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained....right?

Lemons - Lesson in Scale

I am always up for painting lemons!  I love the flavor, the color and the appearance.....I guess they are a bit of a comfort fruit for me.  Sometime last year, I had an "aha" moment regarding scale.  As a longtime portrait and figurative painter, I seemed to have an innate sense about the human proportion and disliked the shapes that appeared too large, too monstrous.  (Likewise, and even more so, I disliked all objects that seemed just too small, even if well painted.)I think that this predisposition carried over into all subject matter.  Most of my still life works featured objects that were either life-sized or slightly smaller...and from a frontal viewpoint.  That seemed correct to me.  And, yet, I always admired dynamic larger works and those that featured objects from a bird's eye viewpoint.  And so I grew.....and came to challenge my notion of scale.  This time around, I took on a work that features lemons, both larger than life-size and from an aerial view.  I think that the white tray functions as a background or negative space.  The result, to me, was a simpler more dynamic work.  I pushed several of my former limitations here and I am thrilled!  Growth and evolution is part of the artistic process.  It is exciting to venture out and to grow.