Blast from the past

 

 

When I harvested my two volunteer acorn squash, they nudged a distant memory.

 

The very next week, my local grocery store offered surprisingly cheap bags of stunning seasonal gourds, and the memory came flooding back.

 

Every autumn in the years when by necessity I was focused on still lifes, I used to produce a cucurbit painting.  "A what painting?"  Well….cucurbits are members of the botanical family Cucurbitaceae which includes lots of edible vine-growers like gourds, pumpkins, squash, and melons.  When I first discovered the botanical name, I also learned that a cucurbit is an essential part of old-time distilling equipment – it's otherwise known as an "alembic."  (Think medieval alchemists).

 

 

Well, these gourds were downright gorgeous, but hadn't I exhausted the possibilities by the time I posted this 2011 retrospective?  Just scroll quickly down through the images (all painted at our old house), and you'll see what I mean.  Still…it was so tempting.

 

SO tempting that I actually woke up one morning with a plan:-- I'd do a Cucurbit Immersive!!  You must have seen ads or articles about the new "Immersive" phenomenon:--   Oversized images of a famous painter's works are projected onto the walls of a huge room, and people pay a hefty price to walk around immersed in, for example, VanGogh's "Starry Night"…selfies in hand.  My neighbours' extended family had a blast doing just this, but even on a free ticket, I'd get vertigo from those bright images against the dark of ceiling and floor.

 

 

 

 NOT if I were in charge, however…and immersed only in the idea, not the actual setting.

 

And so I began:

  

 

As the perspective developed, the receding left wall intersecting in the distance began to remind me of something else.

  

 

I know!!  My 2016 painting, "The Coffee Exchange," modeled on Degas' "The Cotton Exchange."

 

 

It was tricky to know just how much to build up the colours on the figures and in the celebrated (!) background painting, but that dark ceiling was a stabilizing constant.

 

And here's the grand finale:  "Cucurbit Immersive" (copyright 2021)

 

Was this weird and wonderful?  Wild and wacky?  Hilarious?   (If I finish a session laughing out loud, I know I'm on my game.)  All in all, not a bad outcome for an untried recipe.