Monster Radishes – Daily Painting

“Monster Radishes” – 10″ x 14″ watercolor on 140# paper

Purchase from the artist: karen@karenwinters.com

When we go to the Farmers Market on the weekend, we are often delighted to see unusual vegetables from regional truck gardens. This week I was astounded to see these Radishes of Unusual Size (with a tip of the hat to Princess Bride.) These vegetables are between three and four inches in diameter and one alone would be sufficient to populate a salad with piquant red and white medallions.

Because time was short before preparing dinner, this was direct-painted without any pencil underdrawing, an experience I have compared at other times (like working on Yupo) to skiing downhill on ice. With staining pigments like these you get one chance to make the stroke, for good or bad, and then let it be.

A lot of people don’t like radishes because they can be hot, but I like them for crunch and flavor, but I’m going to have a hard time cutting up these proud beauties.

Art thought of the day from Matisse:
“It is feeling that counts above all. It is not physical matter one renders, but human emotion.”

Abstract Cliffs

Cliffside 7.25 x 3.25 – watercolor on paper

This small watercolor was an experiment in abstracting a scene – an exercise that I found very liberating and refreshing. When I look at the work of the California regional painters of the 30s and 40s, I see how often they broke away from realism to paint simplified forms and improvised color schemes. You can see the evidence of this movement in the highly designed travel posters of the era.

Quote of the day from Robert Henri:

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

May you all be in that state all this week!