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Pineapples & Roses. Oil on canvas. 2013. 30x24
I feel like this painting is both dreadfully silly and devastatingly serious and I love that. I love contrast. Contrast is my favorite thing. I feel like it's crazy and that only someone crazy would want it. I worked very hard on this painting, and I'm really quite enormously fond of it.
I can't explain where this came from. We had some plants around for reference. There was a pineapple, there were some roses, I thought it would be fun and interesting to do a pineapple in a forest of roses, and I started drawing it and it took shape and this is what happened. My original vision had many more roses, an entire background of roses, a true thicket of roses, but there was no way I could paint that - I was not willing to paint that! - so it's just a weird party of roses, I guess. Roses are complicated! Roses are hard! I worked so hard on every single one of those roses. Trying again and again and doing everything I could to get them to look like actual roses and not red blobs.
I see this painting as being bold and vibrant and above all else, interesting. This is the most important thing to me. Interest. I like paintings one can weave stories around and wonder about. I think this is a painting one can wonder about it, and I think there's emotion here. I think the roses feel very alive, and that the lone pineapple feels special. I feel like there's something very strange about this painting, and that strangeness draws me in. I find myself smiling at it. It was a crazy idea - I thought it was crazy. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to go through with it. But I did, I took a chance, and I ended up being very happy with it.
Also, I must admit, a few weeks after bringing it home, I realized that it reminded me of a certain level from the Yoshi's Story video game. I loved this game to pieces as a child, and I know it had a pretty big influence on me - I always loved the style of it, the way the entire game looked like a beautiful arts and crafts project brought to life. What's funny is that I hated that level, hated the waving, thorny plants. I found them sinister and I was scared of them. But I guess I was a little bit fascinated by them, too. The level certainly felt very alive. I definitely felt like I was trespassing!
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