"Walnuts, Lemon, and Wine"

This week’s featured painting is “Walnuts, Lemon, and Wine” from 2011.  It is done with oil on linen, and measures 7 x 10 inches.

I spent the first part of my life as a musician.

For the most part, that doesn’t carry over into my current life as a still life painter.

Sometimes it does, though, and it did so in this painting.

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I was very deliberately trying to create a musical sense of rhythm as the eye reads this painting left to right.

The objects were carefully (obsessively) placed – not to create the impression of a steady beat, but rather the sense of flow and variation that brings music to life.

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“Walnuts, Lemon, and Wine” clearly looks backwards for inspiration, to the Dutch still life masters of 350 years ago. In particular, I’m always amazed at their uncanny ability to arrange their compositions with an nearly musical sense of rhythm, phrase, and cadence.

With this painting, I not only wanted to take the opportunity to work with their visual language, but also to explore arranging simple objects – a few nuts, a lemon, a glass of wine – in a lively, rhythmic way.

Canvas prints of this painting are available.  To see more, click the blue button below.