Painting: Mediterranean Still Life

My Pottery Studio - with Easel and Paints!

The kiln is on again today. It’s the second glaze firing, so fingers crossed. But since I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing recently as my last blog post (making more glazes, bisque firing, glazing pots and packing the kiln) I thought I’d blog about something a bit different today.

Remember how my blog is called Pots and Paint?! Originally when I started writing this blog back in 2009, painting was supposed to be the ‘main’ thing I was doing. Ceramics was a newly discovered obsession of mine that I’d only been dabbling in for a few years. But it quickly became obvious that pottery was taking over. In fact about two years ago I said to myself, ‘You know what Jude, I think you’re a potter…’

So the painting got left behind. But the good thing about that was I no longer felt guilty for not painting. In fact, as soon as I made the decision to focus on pots, the pressure was lifted and the idea of painting became more enjoyable. Which is the point after all!

Anyway, recently my sister Sue asked for a set of small paintings for her kitchen: something simple on a Mediterranean theme. And so I thought I’d blog about this latest one I painted for her a couple of weeks ago (I’m sure she won’t mind me sharing it!) As you can see from the photos it’s a simple still life in acrylic, featuring a bright ripe tomato and single clove of garlic.

Finished Canvas

The canvas is very small - about 6 inches by 4 inches with a deep edge – and I’ve continued the background onto all four edges of the painting so it has a slight three-dimensional feel when viewed from all angles: which makes sense I think when you’re sitting at the kitchen table!

So I was quite pleased with the results – and luckily Sue was too! I think it's actually good for me to paint now and then; as a kind of ‘holiday from pots’. The process seems to use a different creative mind-set and momentarily stops me thinking about pots all the time…

By the way, here’s a link to my sister’s blog.