The Pears
It started in Italy this spring. With no studio, and a dining room table for a work area, oil and cold wax was not an option. Neither were pieces of the scale in which Jan is accustomed to working. So she turned to oil for a medium, cut-outs of canvas paper of mostly 6" by 8" for a substrate, and pears (mostly) for a subject.
Why Pears?
I’ve no particular affinity for pears, unless they are in a pie. But I love the seemingly infinite variety of shapes and colors. To me they seem to have human personalities when I’m finished with them. Phil Sylvester used to say, “you know you're finished with a piece when you have all your questions answered.” I never really understood that. Did I have questions? So one day in class I said to him, “Phil, I have no idea what you mean!” And his response was, “You know, the ‘what if's'.”
Ooooh! Well, I've got lots of those. And with the pears it went something like this: What if they were unripe, had leaves, changed the background, used cold wax, added collage, were skinny / fat / lively / somber, paired (pun intended) with a friend, viewed from above, etc. etc. And so I found myself not yet finished with pears. In fact, I think I have a few more in me. Maybe I’ll make a peck o' pears. Who knows?
