the market
A daily obsession with living healthy, what we eat, where our food comes from, and how it is grown and prepared has provided the focus for my current series, The Market. For the past three years I have been working on a collection that has grown to over 150 paintings, inspired by regular visits to farmers’ markets in Austin, Hawaii, Laguna Beach, and San Antonio. Initially I documented my impressions on small squares of heavy Fabriano cotton paper. The tiny 4 x 4” watercolors were used as studies for the larger paintings that followed. I looked to the market as a model for returning to the fresh fruits and vegetables my family cultivated in our small Detroit backyard garden. I also sought out with curiosity the mysterious varieties of watermelon radishes, maroon carrots, fennel, oyster mushrooms, and golden beets that were not familiar to our family crop – ever mindful of the seeds, the patterns, and the process that eventually bring these edible organic treasures to our table.
Many of the paintings are abstract but are influenced by the form, color and patterns I have observed, studied, and recorded. After my outings a market bag’s contents would be sliced, cut, chopped, diced, and sketched before the painting began. My objective is to capture not only what I observe but to isolate, simplify and glorify the produce, recording the essence of a fruit or vegetable with the evocative and sensuous forms always revealed in nature. My desire is that my artwork will allow the observer to see a familiar form with a unique perspective.
A big thank you to Wayne Allen Brenner of the Austin Chronicle on the review of this series.
To view the full painting or a slideshow, please click on a thumbnail from the gallery above.