Sonoma

Original Sold

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The events and circumstances that lead up to a painting coming to be – at least as they come through me – is hardly ever a direct path – especially this one. It started with a photo that I took in the early fall of 2008 – just a year after I started showing my art. I was driving back from an errand at the North Bay Gallery in Sonoma when I saw these white grapes along the side of Highway 12, just south of town. There is something so incredibly alluring about the sight of rows of vines with bunches and bunches of fruit hanging from them. It’s nearly impossible for me to be near this sight and NOT pull over and take pictures. And, the series of photos I took that day ended up in the “grapes” folder in my photo collection for nine years before the time came to do something with them.

It was actually another image of white grapes from my parents’ garden that had been beguiling me over this past summer. Something had me second guess the image, wondering if there wasn’t something else that was more interesting. I went back to my stash of white grape images and was taken by the withering, leaf that was turning brown on the left – it’s so interesting! And I loved the one grape wrapped in a leaf on the right. I’d never have made that up! The original cluster of grapes was wider – requiring a full sheet of watercolor paper. But, I decided to do some Photoshop magic to create a composition to fit in the same tall, skinny proportion as two of the other grape paintings – Mid-Summer Zin and Juicyfruit.

The challenge in the painting process was twofold: I wanted for the colors of the grapes to have enough variation to make them interesting and I wanted to represent the light accurately. All my previous grape paintings have been more intensely colored – blues, purples, reds – where it was easier to pile on the pigment, leave white paper and I’ve portrayed the light. But these colors are lighter, more subtle, plus the light doesn’t just shine on one side of the grapes; here the light seems to skip from grape to grape with darker grapes interspersed. I found this difficult to paint while keeping the relative lights and darks so it would read.

While I was in the midst of this painting the worst wildland fires in California history raged through the area not far from where these grapes grow. Though it’s a minuscule gesture in the scheme of the devastation, I’m calling this painting “Sonoma”: to honor and appreciate this precious and beloved part of the world.

September-October 2017 – 30″x13.5″ – Watercolor on paper