Eden: Sci-Fi Apples

This was done at Anastasia Art House. It's oil on 24x20" stretched canvas.

Earlier in the fall, we were asked to work on a painting with three elements: fruits, flowers and stars. My first reaction was these three things really did not go together. Many people painted different fruits next to a vase of flowers on Mars, or under some starry night. I wanted to do something different.

When looking through pictures of fruits, I thought the top half of these green apples had some resemblance to the surface of Mars, with different peaks and valleys, and same color as a typical Martian! Then I thought I wanted the painting to be mostly cold in color. So I decided flowers really didn't go with the painting, and was only hinted via a vase behind the apples. In fact, I didn't want the whole vase, only a hint, and was reflective so the vase was totally not intrusive. So the composition was made up of the up-close in-your-face apples and hint of vase, while the background was an earth like planet, and a bunch of stars which echo the water droplets on the apples. Colors included prussian blue, cerulean blue, cinnabar, grass green, permanent green light, cadmium yellow etc.

I was gonna call the painting Sci-Fi Apples, for the lack of a better name. My husband decided the painting should be called Eden, as in eating apple in the Garden of Eden and falling from grace and be earth bound. I thought it was funny he was reading so much into this, as my original intent was that I did not want to paint flowers which did not go with fruits and stars!