This is just a story needing to be told. Recorded and remembered. It illustrates why I love being an artist. Every painting that is given as a gift, painted as a commission, or sold to a person because they fall in love with some aspect of the work is added to the list of memories I will have forever. This one is in its own special category.
A few years ago, a friend from my local art club painted a watercolor of a pewter pitcher and tomatoes on a tablecloth backlit with sunlight. I loved her version, but wanted to use her reference photo to make it my own. I reimagined a composition set on three blocks of background: sunlit grass peeking through porch rails, plant leaves agains a dark wall and the tablecloth with horizontal blue line design. The focal point would be the tomato reflected in the pewter. Kitchen-y and Summer-y. I painted it and put it away.
I almost didn’t bring this one to display at Art in the Village this month. But a small painting of jelly jars I was showing needed a companion piece, and I saw this one as another potential kitchen painting that might just help catch someones eye at the show.
Indeed it did. In a most unexpected way.
My high school was big and lots of graduates have gone on to do a variety of things with their lives. I was quiet and bookish in those days. Martie Bosshart was a vivacious, outgoing tomboyish teenager in my class. Martie Duncan went on to find her voice as a Food network star, battling it out on cooking competitions, writing cookbooks and working on television shows with famous chefs like Bobby Flay or Guy Fieri. On May 6, she was checking out the art show after finishing up a book signing for her latest book at a nearby book store. I recognized her. She recognized me. “I only buy paintings from people I know”, Martie said. “Well, you know me”, I said. And so, it happened that Martie bought my watercolor painting I call “Summer Shade.” She will be displaying it in her kitchen right next to a print of a painting by someone else she “knows”. A world famous celebrity chef who also happens to be a pretty famous artist, French Chef Jacques Pepin!
True story. All true, every word!
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