Raspberry Twists

Raspberry Cheesecake with White Chocolate Star 100.00 plus shipping 5" x 7" oil on archival linen board

Raspberry Knockout ( sold ) 5" x 7" oil on archival linen board

"Painting is not only to copy the object, it is to sieze a harmony between numerous relations."~Paul Cezanne

Raspberries mounded under a glistening glaze, nuts in profusion, and finally red. And cobalt violet. Two cheesecakes, two forms, two similar color families. But again, a difference. So they give a slightly different message. To me the first one looks contained, full bodied, but only bursting out at the top. Potential. The second one, the party is in progress. And let everyone join in. Nuts are spilling out all over the place. Yeah, probably some champagne involved.

Painting is relationships. Each stroke is interlinked with all of the others. And they all feed the central idea of a piece. I painted these one right after the other and finished up the light touches this morning after the darker bits had dried somewhat, so the whites would leave the pinks and reds alone. The oil is very buttery and it flows. But I wanted to paint them as close together as I could, the palette is the same. However, those bits and flurries of all those nuts, are almost formless, random triggers of disruption on the surface. On the other, that surface is smooth, calm. It is an exercise in syncopation. You know, everything is almost the same, but scooched just a bit toward a variation. Being able to make that kind of change within a restriction, is very important to me.

Cezanne said that the way to paint an orange is to paint several of them at once so that the whole is revealed just a bit in each one. Raspberries. Red. Add them to a rich cheesecake and you have a potential license to licentiousness. Passion. That's what is being painted. It would be fun to do a large piece using raspberry dessert variations from Laduree. Hm. The overall impact would be almost too much. It's the succulence of red, and then he does such things to them. Hm. There's a thought.

These two small pieces are little bits of passion. Glimmers, touchstones, a slightly sinful gift to delight one's palette. And I like them. They are a hint of possibilities. I like to paint red. I like to play with proportions of it. Too much, not enough, how far from red of passion to red of anger, or red of patriotism. Red of church. Red of vibrant healing.

I think tomorrow I'll show you a large red piece I did, that a husband bought for his wife. Red. One of my favorite colors to paint.