Lemons, Still Learning After All These Years

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I just finished reading Luis Meléndez, Master of the Spanish Still Life, and it really excited me to see ordinary items painted in such a manner that were more real than a photo image appears. This is the catalog for a traveling exhibition that will be at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston January 31-May 9, 2010, if you should happen to be in the vicinity. I wish I could see it.

Making realist art is all about seeing, and this catalog has a wealth of high quality reproductions as well as photo macrographs and micrographs along with x-ray and IR images. It is very scholarly and informative covering the artist's life and methods of working. I learned that this artist specifically chose items for his still life subjects that were of varied and contrasting textures. So I chose a lemon, a tiny dish and a block of rock for a range of textures. I set them up on an old piece of wood with a fabric background.

This 6.5" x 4.5" work was an even more challenging subject as I had just finished a 30" x 40" painting of a fisherman in a river. Enjoy.