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The Perks of Being an Artist

Tag Archives: avocado

Come Rain or Come Shine or Come Insecurity

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by emilypageart in death, dementia, humor, music, sip and paint studio, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

anxiety, audrey ii, avocado, dad, death, dementia, depression, dreams, nightmares, PTSD

I’m sad, guys. I don’t know why I’m sad now. I just know that I’m grieving my dad HARD right now. I know grief comes in waves. I think partly that this is because I’m in a period of real transition now that I’ve closed the paint and sip studio and things have stalled with the next adventure. Insecurity in my life isn’t helping. I think it’s also because it’s the time of year that I tend to get a depression flare. It happens just about every year around this time: my depression kicks it up a notch and my brain starts telling me I’m a giant loser and a miserable person who makes terrible, cowardly choices, and the future is very, very bleak. Again, insecurity in my life isn’t helping.

I’ve been having nightmares about my dad again. I say “nightmares,” but they’re not really scary – just really, really sad. I’ve woken up crying several times. And my dreams always share one feature: he always has dementia. He’ll be in different stages, but he’s never just him. In a dream a couple days ago, I was dancing to “Come Rain or Come Shine” with him, and for a split second, he was dancing and interacting with me like he was normal and healthy, and I thought, “This is a dream, but it’s a fantastic dream. I’ve got to keep this going.” I very rarely am aware that I’m  dreaming, but I knew it this time and I was desperate for it to continue. And then, in an instant, he changed and I kept grabbing his arms and trying to force him and my dream to come back. I woke up so bloody angry that I couldn’t even remember him as my fully functioning father in a dream. Why can’t I think of him that way? Why is it always him in some stage of dementia?

Two nights ago, I had a flashback. I was feeling really tired and a little nauseated and lay down, and suddenly I was convinced that I was crumpled up, crying, in the hallway outside of the room where my dad was dying. I could hear the oxygen machine going and smell the nursing home stink. I could feel the carpet underneath me and the wallpaper at my back. PTSD, anyone? Ugh. I just want to forget those final three, pain-filled days.

So yeah, it’s been a hard couple weeks. And Wednesday is my 40th birthday. How can I celebrate it without including my dad? How can he not be here for it? He’s supposed to be here for it. I miss him so damn much all the damn time.

But there’s nothing I can do about it. And since I’m in a depressive cycle, I need to focus on the good things. I’ll share one with you.  This is the pit I discovered when I cut open an avocado for lunch today:

avocado pit

How cool is that? It looks like a tree. Or Audrey II (there was that total eclipse of the sun a little while back…). Or brains. There is an excellent possibility that I chased the cats around the house with it chanting, “braaaaaaaains.” I may have also tried to chase S around the house with it and he may have taken it from me and thrown it out when I wouldn’t stop. It may also have attracted fruit flies and I may also being currently trying to get them drunk/kill them on cheap white wine and dish soap. Hey, it’s not the worst way to go.

Life goes on, come rain or come shine.

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The Photo Vs. The Painting

09 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by emilypageart in art, painting, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

art, artist, avocado, bicycle, bike, bottles, cherry tomato, food art, garlic, kitchen art, oil on board, oil painting, paint, painter, painting, photography, photorealism, piano pedal, realism, realist art

Since I posted about how I often have to work from crummy photos (here and here), I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the photos next to the paintings to see what I mean. I’m sometimes left guessing. Other times, I guess and then ignore what the photo is showing me to make a bolder choice. Simply making easy changes like background color can completely alter the feel of a image, as can pushing the contrast between your highlights and shadows. I view the photos as a jumping off point. It’s good for reference, but I’m not bound to it (which is good since the photos are often pretty bad in the first place).First up is the Avocado and Cherry Tomatoes:

avocados 3.jpg

The crummy photo

Avocado and Cherry Tomatoes

The awesome painting (I say very humbly)

Next is a garlic one:

garlic 10.jpg

Garlic III

And then some garlic cloves:

garlic cloves.jpg

Garlic cloves.jpg

And piano pedals:

DSC_0069.JPG

piano-pedals

And, finally, the hanging bottles painting:

bottles 1.JPG

hanging-bottles

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Why You Shouldn’t Cut Open That Avocado

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by emilypageart in art, painting, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

apples, art, artist, avocado, cherry tomato, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, food art, grapes, kitchen art, oil on board, oil painting, Raleigh artist, realism, realist art

Painting avocados makes me slightly cranky. The skin is, well, unsatisfying with the crazy texture that has to pick up just enough highlight but not too much. And since it’s a perishable food, you have to work primarily from photos if you’re doing a realist style because it will require a couple of coats of paint (which need several days to dry in between). And I’ll be honest, I’m not a great photographer. I took a photography class in college many moons ago, and remember virtually nothing about the different settings on my camera and how to set up lighting for what I need. So any time I paint food that will spoil quickly, I’m stuck sort of muddling through with often not-so-great photos to work from. Really, I need to take another photography course that focuses on close-up images so that I can get a better handle on that, but there’s only so much time and money in my life.

Still, I’m generally able to get at least a pretty good idea from the photos I take what’s going on in the composition I’ve set up, and I can push the colors and sharpen edges to be what I really want them to be when I start painting. In the painting below, I was dealing with not just the obnoxious-to-paint skin (I mean, really, who designed these things – didn’t they KNOW I was going to want to paint them some day and that they were going to make my life really difficult?!), but I had also cut it in half since the inside is the good stuff that makes my mouth water, so painting from life wasn’t an option.

All of that being said, I’m happy with how it turned out and I will refrain from licking it for at least a little while longer.

Avocado and Cherry Tomatoes

Avocado With Cherry Tomatoes 8″ x 8″ oil on board

Original available at http://shop.emilypageart.com/ and prints available at http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/1-emily-page.html?tab=artwork.

A couple more examples of times I was an idiot and decided to cut food open to photograph it for a new painting:

grapes_compressed

Grapes 5″ x 5″ oil on board

apples_compressed

Apples 6″ x 12″ oil on board

Prints available on Fine Art America (here for the grapes and here for the apples).

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Avocado and Cherry Tomatoes

03 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by emilypageart in art, painting, Uncategorized

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Tags

art, artist, avocado, cherry tomato, paint, painter, painting, realist art, still life

Just finished up this little piece (which has nothing to do with next Wednesday’s experiment, but which I wanted to go ahead and post since I’m quite happy with it):

Avocado and Cherry Tomatoes

Avocado and Cherry Tomatoes 8″ x 8″ oil on board

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Emily Page

Emily Page

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You can view my artwork on Facebook or on my website at http://www.emilypageart.com

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