Still Lifes with Peppers

"Four Sides of a Yellow Pepper" (18"X14", Oil on Canvas, $400)

"Four Sides of an Orange Pepper" (18"X14", Oil on Canvas, $400)

"Four Sides of a Red Pepper" (18"X14", Oil on Canvas, $400)

"Four Sides of a Green Pepper" (18"X14", Oil on Canvas, $400)

These four paintings can be seen as a suite of pictures that would fill a wall in a line, or two- over-two. I painted them to give people choices about what they liked in the food-painting realm of my work. The red pepper one is actually a re-paint, since some nice lady liked that color the most and only wanted that one.

I really had fun doing these paintings. Applying the principles of wet background, lost edges and complimentary colors to create the shadows on the surface of each pepper led to lots of good passages all throughout the four paintings. My mother likes the painting of the green one best. Which one do you like the best?

After doing the paintings, all these peppers found themselves in various salads. I must say that I find orange and yellow peppers to be the sweetest, red peppers to be the richest and green peppers to have the most classic "pepper" taste. Can you smell the roasted peppers and onions yet? Tina (my fiancee) used to cook them up when she lived alone, just to get that smell in the house. Now I cook them up all the time, just to get that taste in our dinner.