Hydrangeas and Red Pears

Hydrangeas and Red Pears
S.Shawcross / 20" x 16" / Oil on masonite / 

Of all the paintings I've done of the red pears this one might be the most successful. I bought the pears at the Super C grocery store from the shelf where the withered and wilted are given their last gasp with bright sale stickers. They cost me 99 cents--a small price to pay for such ruby rubenesque promise . I brought them home and put them on a green plate on the table and then I painted them. I painted them five times in all. On the table, by the window, with a teapot, without a teapot, alone and together. Brenda Lee came and painted them as well. Then I brought them with me to Brenda Lee's magnificent studio where we painted them again. And tired from all our madness with the pears we discovered the name for our group of two-- the Dead Pear Society. And so this is our blog now. I may not be done painting them as the sight of them lying dying on the table is somehow sweetly tragic, a cluster of spinsters dressed in gaudy red grown moldy and unsavoured with the passage of time... Thank heavens Brenda Lee has taken a magnificent photo of their sad demise. Anyway, I'm pleased with these hydrangeas as I had no idea how to approach painting masses with delicate components, let alone using my sweeping strokes... but it just magically happened as it sometimes does for me. The right side of my brain was working for a change. I'm struggling now with yellow irises and water lilies. I am not monet yet I suspect.