Monday, October 31, 2016

The Last Pumpkin ( Composition Study )




                                             An original oil painting, on canvas panel
                                             20 X 16", unframed
                                             $600.00,  ( plus $25.00, pack and ship )
                                       

                                                         ( click on image to enlarge )



      I pulled this still-life from storage, to post on the blog, because it seemed like an
appropriate choice to show on Halloween.  The title of this imagined setting reflects the
idea that this pumpkin, and its ornamental-gourd companion,  may be located in an old,
farm fruit-cellar, awaiting their final destiny, after the rest of the bountiful, autumn harvest
has already found its way to the dinner table, in some dish or other.  The light, filtering
down from a broken window-frame or doorway, reveals two things which are always
guaranteed to be found in such ancient cellars: dust and spiderwebs.  So, all-in-all, it is
not the kind of painting which most people would like to have hanging on their walls.

     But actually, the subject matter of the painting was not what was important to me,
at the time that I was painting it.  The subjects might as well have been bottles, or jugs,
or boxes or any number of objects.  What was important to me back then, was the study
of the dramatic use of light and shadow, which some of the Renaissance masters used
so effectively, called chiaroscuro.   And, although this painting, and others from this
series, will never achieve the status of a Caravaggio, they still hold up fairly well, for the
simple studies that they are.


   

                                      

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