Description
My dad has planted a vegetable garden every year of my life. There were organic gardening magazines lying around the house when I was growing up, when the word “organic” was still exotic. The house we moved to when I was a year and a half old was on a quarter acre and he planted a huge corner of the lot with fruit trees and an enormous vegetable garden every summer. My three brothers and I spent our summers barefoot, sticking green bean leaves to our clothes, eating raw beans off the vines – and cucumbers, still warm from the sun, peeled and dunked in a mug that had our own concoction of oil, vinegar and ketchup. But the most special treats from the summer garden were the corn and the home-grown tomatoes. Fat, juicy, sweet – there’s nothing like them. These are Dad’s tomatoes from last season (2010). It was fun to paint them this year just at the time when they’re coming in by the bucket-full. I had a couple of them sitting on my painting table so I could see the color they really are. This was fun to paint – all the abstract shapes in the background – and it seemed so small and easy on the heels of painting “Hallelujah” last month. Yesterday I was at work at Light Rain, to capture this one for prints and I asked Suzy Simms, a friend of my boss, Steve’s to help me name it. Suzy is a kick so I knew she’d come up with something good. It took her about a second and a half – she said “Ripe.” She’s so right! Ripe they are, and “Ripe” it is! Now I’m headed out to my folks to help Dad harvest this year’s crop!
September 2011
