Painting Food and Exploring a Little Realism

 Last Year I saw a wonderful painting of salad done by Aubrey Levinthal and it made me want to paint food.  I know that sounds funny, but I am serious.  I wanted to paint food, and in particular, salad.  So I started with a photo of a salad  that was made by my friend, who makes the best salads you a have ever tasted by the way, along with a glass of wine.  Painting the salad was the easy part, but the glass of wine was difficult.  Making it look like glass...wow, tough.  I sure enjoyed painting food though!

After that, I felt even more adventurous.  I painted a meat and cheese platter from a photo I had taken while out one wonderful evening with my husband.  We had gone to this old castle near Denver and they had live music, food, wine and dessert.  The music was done by a male vocalist and he sang these gorgeous ballads while playing guitar.  I think it may have been one of the most romantic dates of my life, and the platter was one of the best I had ever tasted, so painting it was the perfect way to capture the memory.  

This semi-realistic style is a huge swing from my usual style and I have thought many times about exploring this type of painting more often.  I hesitate though because I can see the potential for becoming obsessive about details and the fight there might be trying to arm wrestle things into the right shapes.  With my usual style, I can be imperfect and that suits me the best.  

So perhaps from time to time I will just paint food I want to remember.

:)