Pomegranates, Jacinta’s Garden

Original Sold

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In October 1996, at the end of my half a year in France, I traveled throughout Europe for two weeks with two of my brothers, Matt and Mike. We met my parents on the Croatian Island of Brac, where my grandparents were born.

Brac is a rocky, arid island dotted with olive trees; the water that surrounds it is crystal clear, and life is simpler than ours at home in California. One perfect autumn afternoon we had lunch at my mother’s cousin Jacinta’s home. She cooked us a special meal of potato gnocci with a rich meat sauce.

A stroll out to her back terrace after lunch treated us to the gorgeous view of the sea and the mainland beyond. The tree growing these pomegranates was between the terrace and the view. The view and the tree can be seen in a painting I did a decade later – my self-portrait, Home.

Like the island, painting this one was rocky for me. I was almost never pleased with the results of my painting efforts. I experienced first hand how an artist’s life takes discipline. Though this is an early painting of mine, something in me kept me sticking with it. I finally finished it on the first two days of a solo painting retreat in August of 2007. I kept saying to myself “this is like being in a difficult labor, this painting just does not want to be born!”

It was great to at last be able to say “Whew! It’s DONE!”

This painting stayed in my inventory for a number of years. As I developed as an artist, my vision refined. I realized part of what had bothered me – the composition was off. It seriously needed cropping. I took four inches off the bottom and right side, focusing the eye more on the main fruit. I had to save – and frame – the sweet little detail of the twig and the curl of the leaf on the lower left tip as a memento of the original painting.

August 2007 – 22″x22″ – later to become 18″x18″ – Watercolor on paper