Still Lifes - Fruit, Food

For this website page, I chose to show a group of fruit and food paintings and a drawing. They are created in various sizes and compositions but all have colorful character.

Apples, Banana, Lemon 1991 oil and acrylic on wood 24 x 24 inches $300

For this traditonal, styled still life oil painting, I took the time and effort

to paint convincingly three food items richly and solidly: an awesome apple, a beautiful banana, and a lovely lemon on a well shadowed plate over a large masonite piece of wood I found once I think in my birth house but it also could have been bought.

Still Life with Apples 1995 oil on wood 21 x 22.50 inches $325

Strawberry Cake 2004 oil 24 x 36 inches $350

After one of my brothers brought this delightfuly super-strawberry and creamy-cake one evening I think to celebrate someone's birthday in my family at our NW Washingtonian house, I had great fun painting this satisfying still life. I especially enjoyed imitating and being inspired by Wayne Thieubaud's "Cakes" painting at The National Gallery of Art's East Wing that I once saw. It truly was a thrill to paint like Thieubaud the frosting of this cake with great impasto, thick oil paint strokes built up with a pallette knife.

Apples 2006 watercolor 16 x 20 inches $300

Nectarines 2010 acrylic 27.50 x 29.50 inches $325

I once painted this still life at a studio classroom at The former College of New Rochelle(now closed and renamed Mercy College) in New Rochelle, New York back in the 1990's. It first was a painting of peaches but since they rotted there before I could finish painting them there, I ended up repainting them as Nectarines in my Washinton, DC studio where they didn't rot as fast.

Pumpkin with Purple Background 2013 oil pastel on purple paper $300

Once again when creating this picture with oil,pastel, I used color paper as a background well. That was inspired by 1.) a friend again at The Phillips Collection who commissioned me a drawing on pink paper; 2.) a priest at a Catholic Church I sometimes go to in Washington, DC who had a sermon about the colors purple and orange; and 3) by one of my favorite Van Morrison songs called "Warm Love, ...it's everpresent everywhere. Hence I drew a great big pumpkin on deep purple and with bright yellow for the foreground the complementary colors of orange and purple, and yellow and purple helped me celebrate a Happy Holloween that year for sure!