Brown du Jour

Have you ever realized how many foods are BROWN? Whole major food groups, Meat, Nuts, Baked Goods and Chocolate. This presented a conundrum.  How could an art show about food ignore brown.  People generally don't respond to the color brown.  (Actually, brown isn't even a color.  As I learned from Lisa Semerad, brown is denatured orange.)  This is "Pain du Jour."

the fascist gourmet

 

It wasn't until I read the nice piece in Patch.Com (

An Artist's Exhibit Reveals a Not-So Still Life

oldtownalexandria.patch.com) that I realized what an influence my elder brother has had on my career.  I often paint from the photos of his travels (he's been to all 7 continents), but I hadn't understood his influence on my food paintings.  We call him the "Fascist Gourmet", and not always with a smile on our faces.  It is true that when I was young and my Mother (also pictured) made actual bunny footprints on our floor at Easter, my brother Vance countered the Easter Bunny fantasy by sprinkling tabasco sauce on random jelly beans in my basket.  I wonder if there is a statute of limitations on such a vile crime...

La Dolce Vita

This is another dessert painting currently residing in the Art League closet.  I've always had a fondness for meringues.  When I was a kid, it was the only dessert I was allowed to eat.  Mother apparently thought the absence of fat content made the treat acceptable. (I had weekly weigh-ins with one or both parents in attendance.  I can't blame them, I was a lying sneak.)  Flash forward several decades.  I was in Carrara, Italy with Danni Dawson's workshop on a Sunday.  After we'd visited the marble quarries, we were famished.  We searched in vain for a ristorante.  We passed a Pasticceria with meringues in the window.  They, too, were closed, but a girl can dream.

life imitates art

Carolyn Packard is not only a great cook and friend, she's a food stylist.  It was her idea to put the clementines and the asparagus on pedestals the night of the show.  The crowd ate every morsel of food she prepared, including the clementines.  The asparagus was spared.  I'm eating it tonight.

All Hail Good Friends

The above was just one of the fabulous hors d'ouevres served by Carolyn Packard, Janice Stofft and Judy Yavit at the reception for "Food, Glorious Food".  Carolyn worked for weeks with her sister Janice (who flew up from Florida to help) on a menu that included  crab salad with mango and coconut milk  on Plantain chips, pulled pork with orange marmalade in scoops, Beef tenderloin sandwiches with carmelized onions and horseradish creme, tuna tartare on cucumber with black sesame seeds (which looked like watermelon), the above shrimp with individual cocktail sauce, truffles, brigadarios (sp?), and tons of vegetarian dishes. Judy Yavit provided pistachio brittle, pine nut cookies, chocolate meringues and more.  All I had to do was make whoopie pies.  Don't you wish you'd been there?

Edible Reds

Red is hard.  Subtle nuances tend to get lost in red.  The one thing I learned while painting this piece is that the green of the strawberry tops is sneaky.  It's a cool green on one side and a warm green on the other.

Yoo hoo!

I'm finally on YouTube! (http://www.youtube.com/theartleague#p/a/u/0/V5mjqDf4_Ws).  I'll be lost in the crowd unless I can shoot pyrotechnic blasts from my nostrils.  Ah well, we peddle on.....

Death by Ellipses

I have a great deal of trouble with ellipses, which apparently is why there are so many of them in my paintings.  I first noticed this perversity when I set out to paint these railroad oil cans in 2007.

The grape painting  has ellipses, on top of ellipses on top of elliptical shadows.  It nearly killed me.  I hope it sells.

Food, Glorious Food video

https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/video/video.php?v=10150155173658270&oid=122594074457&comments

This link will take you to the video of the Art League  show.
The above piece, New Kiss in Town, was bought by a good friend who will be making desserts for the reception.

Hidden Treats

The above, "Wretched Excess" looks better in real life.  It is one of the additional show paintings that is tucked away in the Art League closet. In fact, all of my dessert paintings are lounging there.   Hmmm.... Originally, I meant to paint this:

on a gold leaf background.  Proportionally, it didn't look wretchedly excessive enough.  So I turned the canvas horizontally and started anew.  This was a problem piece.  I started over so many times, it's a wonder all the layers of gold leaf, oil paint and glaze didn't crack the stretcher bars.  Worse, of course, was that I had to keep setting up ice cream sundaes as models.  I put on 6 pounds with this piece.

Be Witty, dammit!

Erica Fortwengler, whom I've come to think of as my agent, though she's actually a terrifically talented, beautiful young woman, and not a crone with a heart of stone, told me I had to blog every day my show "Food, Glorious Food" was on exhibit.  "Be witty," she advised.  It reminded me of a time when a writer friend of mine was instructed by her agent to make the novel 25% funnier.  The above piece, A Brace of Onions, did not make the cut.  (Erica can be a cruel mistress.) It is not in the show, but it's hanging in Studio 3 of the Torpedo Factory. Come visit. I'm there Fridays and Saturdays.