Meyer Lemons (2023)
No down time
For whatever reason, it’s often the case that the beginning of the year is a little less busy with client work than the rest of the year. Probably, the end of year break and the way things are scheduled around that, result in less of a feeling that the train of life is chugging at full speed. So I’ve often taken the first couple of months of the year to work on other things, and in early 2023 that included a pair of still life paintings.
These still life paintings are fairly fast to do, the smaller 6x8” ones are usually a continual sprint from start to finish, while wet. In 2023 I went up to 8x10” and took the opportunity to do them each in two steps, painting the objects in one go but massaging the background a bit longer after drying.
Most of the time, when I find the gaps in my schedule to do them, I would run to local farmers markets or whatever to find things in season, bring them home and paint them with little planning. A couple of times, as with Persimmons and here, I knew someone who had fruit trees that produced nice-looking fruit, so I asked my sister-in-law this time, when her Meyer Lemons were about ready, to pick a few nice ones and try to include some stems and leaves. I set up the scene, and got to work, working on the overall and the lemons in one go, photographing it just in case, then returning to tone and work on the background more.
