Chocolate Croissant

This croissant was as puffy and delicious as I have made it here. Biting into one of these is truly a life affirming moment. Instant and vivid memories of patisserie counters in many cites morning and afternoon, "un pain chocolate, s'il vous plait." A dark strip of chocolate buried within the buttery tender layers.Life is good. When painting this I was very much aware of that opening illustration in Saint Expuery's "Le Petit Prince". The one grownups think is a hat, but it is really an anaconda who swallowed an elephant. Painting what is outside of the image or unseen but truly an essence of it, is important to me as an artist. Otherwise, it is just a technical exercise. When I was choosing pigments, I was feeling the coolness of walking into La Marquise to rest from my walk in the Quarter, at Still Perkin in the Garden District jotting some notes in a journal while taking a break from the studio, or in the coffee shop near the fairgrounds hand in hand during a once upon a time affaire. So as I squeezed out the naples yellow, the burnt sienna and red ochre, the cobalt violet, the rose dore, the sepia and the white , my thoughts were shifting, vignettes floating, my mind pondering richness. How can I paint a luscious strip of chocolate when it is buried underneath so that whomever views this may think it is not just a piece of bread, but a life fully lived.