“Is there really a rainbow in the flavors of Good ‘N Fruity candy?”
Inspiration often hides in some very strange places. I was just checking out an artist’s work today on instagram who is inspired by women’s shoes (@shoesshucos). Manhole covers, rust, butterflies, the bible, you name it, an artist is inspired by it, propelled by it to make art. Inspiration sometimes gently nudges us to put brush to canvas. Other times it kicks us in the testicles. Inspiration can trigger an artist to use a new color scheme. It can motivate us to completely change our style from representational landscape artist to expressionistic abstract sculpture. Inspiration is both an ambrosia and an addictive drug, sometimes even leading an artist to extremely dark and problematic places for the mind and soul. The inspiration behind the next painting in the MOD! series was not of that flavor. It was candy.
“Flavorable” just sort of burst onto the canvas, splashing its happy yellows and reds across the surface. The colorful “cells” ended up almost floating above the composition. Look Ma, I’m flying! The loosely, perhaps sloppily, drawn linear elements reflected a child’s loving approach to drawing where cleanliness of line and attention to geometric detail be damned. Warm and cool colors play tug-of-war near the center of the painting, hopefully drawing the viewer in to watch the competition.
Candy was more than a mere taste treat for me as a kid. It was a currency. It was Haute Cuisine. Candy was the Holy Grail gleefully received at the end of me and my buddies’ arduous quest to the candy counter at the local Goldblatt’s (pretty sure that store doesn’t exist anymore). Coming from a family of relatively humble means, my father was a cop, an honest one, which means not a boatload of illicit cash for mysteriously purchased swimming pools, and my mother who stayed at home to raise us kids, my allowance was also relatively humble. Candy was without doubt one of the very few purchases I wouldn’t second guess while spending the entirety of my weekly stipend. Halloween was certainly the highest of holy days. Well, maybe after Christmas. Okay, Halloween was my second highest holiday.
“Flavorable” reflected a maturing use of my newly acquired artistic signatures/gestures, my new mark making techniques. Everything from a light use of stencil, painted line work shot out of an emptied mustard bottle, focused dotted patterns, dry brush, wet on wet, a flicked squibbly line applied by dipping a stick into the paint jar and flipping it at the canvas, were all used to complete this painting. To date, “Flavorable” is one of my favorites of the series. And I still love it, which is far more powerful than just liking it.
It’s my adult artistic candy jar.
