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Still Life |
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Still Life with
Grapes One of my early paintings, a studio exercise done when I was about sixteen. This was a permanent setup in the art studio where I was taking lessons at the time. As such, the fruit was plastic, and the satin background drapery a tad faded. But the most amusing aspect about this painting was the wine. It would evaporate overnight, leaving a dark residue behind. Our instructor, Marge Colavito, would add to the glass each week, and the residue would build up more and more over time. By time this painting was done, the contents of the glass was a semisolid gel of a color that would turn away any wine connoisseur. It became a joke in it's own right, and stayed that way for other students. Overall, who knows if this still life brought more people to love art, or turned them away in revulsion?
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Still Life with Brass
Plate Another student exercise, from when I was sixteen. This one was actually done shortly before the "Still Life With Grapes" above. This was another semi-permanent setup in a corner of Marge's studio. I like the other still life far better myself.
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The Broken Leaf There's a story behind this painting. At college, we used to climb a small cliff on the Palisades to go from our dorm, which was a floating ship moored in the Hudson River, to the student center atop Castle Point, Hoboken. It was maybe 150 feet high, with a spectacular view overlooking the Hudson to Manhattan. As the narrow trail up the cliff twisted and turned, you could see downtown to the Statue of Liberty and the World Trade Center, and on a clear day uptown almost to the George Washington Bridge. I took that trail several times a day, and knew it well. One day about halfway up I tripped over this weed, and almost fell headlong off the edge. Picking myself up off the ground, I sat panting for a few minutes, since a fall could have been fatal (the worst injuries from the trail I ever heard about were one broken arm and a few twisted ankles). Regaining my composure, I considered this an important event in my life that should be remembered, so I took the remains of the plant with me and sketched it right away, later turning it into this painting.
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