Comes a new year, and I find a time to pause in my butterfly report. The holiday season has been pleasantly busy for us at Living Traditional Arts, and part of the activity has been a dispersal of many of the food related paintings from the Living Traditional Arts Shop.
Andrew Bick’s food photos are moving, too, and I am on the prowl for vintage frames to showcase his images. By the by I found a frame for my painting of cabbage leaves, so I am sending it to the Shop to celebrate a new year.
I enjoyed the great pleasure some weeks ago of walking into the kitchen of a friend and finding an old painting of mine still sitting on the ledge above her stove, where she had put it many years ago.
Being a fond devotee of the bean plant, I enjoy painting dancing beans, and being a committed culinary explorer, I have been doing this for a long time, painting pictures of things that are good to eat. Can’t claim a great public following for my presentations. One reason may be that they generally leave my studio as commissions to go right into private homes, not much public viewing along the way. Some never leave home at all.
One 24×30 “Garlic,” painted in oils the year I was painting in short night sessions in the living room at Bakke Farm, is still at the farm. I found it hanging out in the machine shed, side by side a painting of our sap pan cooking on the 4’x8’ masonry firebox Michael built for syrup season at Bakke Farm. As a piece on syrup season, an attempt to capture the warmth and smell of the fire and the sap steam, the picture was mildly successful, and since then I have continued to ponder the spirit of fire and wonder how to invite color to awaken the aroma of a season.
Inspired by the beauty of real food I keep seeing pictures, and once I see a picture, I do feel a mighty urge to bring it to life in oils. I like to keep a food painting going.
I look forward to finding my pictures on many more kitchen walls around the world, and so I am getting ready to paint a few more dancing beans, and maybe a tomato or two, to bring in the new year.
