Monday Morning

On Monday morning our neighbor, Tina, came by with more plants for our yard. She also brought a bouquet of Lisianthus and giant purple dahlias. The attached card said “You are those people… so devastated. Love you, Tina.” After she left I looked at the flowers and cried. Forty-nine babies robbed of life.

Today I painted those flowers. Each petal was one of those babies stolen from their families and this world. Several months ago Ilene, a fellow grad student, challenged me to paint one painting a day. Today I did exactly that. The paint felt so good under the brush. For hours it moved onto the canvas. Around nine o’clock this evening I was done. As I looked at the finished work a saw the two fallen purple petals lying on the table at the foot of the vase. The tears welled again. I realized they were the couple that would never get married, Drew Leinonen and Juan Guerrero. Now they will only share a funeral. To their parents, Mrs. Leinonen and Mr. Guerrero, “there are thousands of people across the world, and a gardener named Tina and a painter and his husband in California who love you.” We are so devastated.

Red

Last week I noticed the spineless Opuntia cactus (nopales) had an infestation of scale insects.  I crushed some in my hand and the result was a dark red stain and a quest that led south to the Aztecs, home to China and downtown to Santa Ana.

Cochineal insects on Opuntia cactus

The little insects were cochineal bugs, Dactylopius coccus; the stain was carminic acid, produced by the insect to protect itself from predation.  That carminic acid has been used as a red pigment for at least 1500 years in central and South America.  The compound was used to produce the pigment called “carmine lake,” a natural source for crimson color until chemists synthesized alizarin and related compounds beginning in the early 1900’s.  The great downfall of carmine and most natural pigments is that they fade in bright light.  Most modern synthesized pigments are light fast. The downfall of modern pigments is that they are carcinogenic, so bug-sourced cochineal is back in vogue, coloring your red velvet cupcake from Starbucks, your lipstick and pills and ointments.

El Greco’s El Salvador. The red in the robes is painted with cochineal.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Yesterday I saw an ad for a new show at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, “The Red that Colored the World.” The entire show deals with how cochineal has been used throughout history.  By 1520 the Spanish invaders of the New World were profiting heavily form the cochineal trade.  In fact, in 1523 Charles V decreased that no fabrics could be dyed in the Americas, but rather the dye must be shipped to Europe.  And this resulted in the red dye trade to Europe and Asia.  It was one of the most valuable commodities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  It was used worldwide.  The famed Florentine Medici family controlled a large part of the traffic.  The red in the coats of the British soldiers was cochineal.  Furniture from Napoleon’s château of Malmaison was upholstered in bright-crimson cochineal dyed wool. And it was incorporated into paints. Christ’s red silk tunic in El Greco’s The Salvador is painted in cochineal.  Cochineal has been identified in the paintings of Canaletto, Delacroix, Rembrandt, Renoir, Van Gogh, Velázquez, and Van Dyck.  When it reached China, the primary dye for red silk was derived from the root of the madder plant, think alizarin. Cochineal was a brighter crimson and quickly captured the attention of the emperors.

As a painter, I’m always thinking about color, but not usually about where it came from.  In the Blick Art store I encountered some dry powdered pigments.  I remember thinking, “Wow, I’m glad I don’t have to use those to make paint.” But those dry, powered pigments must have a source.  The next time I’m there I’m going to look for carmine lake and give paint making a try.

The Red that Colored the World is open from October 31 through February 21, 2015 at the Bowers Museum, 2002 N. Main Street, Santa Ana, CA 92706

http://www.bowers.org/index.php/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/417-the-red-that-colored-the-world

Red, Green, Yellow and Tasty

Our heirloom tomatoes

Aunt Ruby Arnold died in Greenville, Tennessee in 1997 but a small piece of her lives on in a bed in my garden.  I never met her and I’ve never been to Tennessee, but her wonderful huge green heirloom tomato called “Aunt Ruby’s German Green” is by far my favorite summertime treat. This piquant beefsteak tomato that is green when it’s ripe was cultivated from a “German Green” introduced to America by her immigrant grandfather. In 1993 it was introduced to the Seed Savers Exchange (seedsavers.org) by Bill Minkey of Darien, Wisconsin, who requested adding “Aunt Ruby’s” to the name.  We grow this one every year in our raised garden bed in the backyard of a house we have in Mission Viejo.  This summer, while I was in Philadelphia, Tony increased the garden to five large raised beds. Although these produce several types of vegetables, the increase in garden size was really for more tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, tomatoes of all colors, textures, smells, shapes and sizes.

In a strange way Aunt Ruby not only lives on in the Mission Viejo garden beds, but in my paintings too. This resurrection happened after I took a short plein air course with Tom Brown, a local painter. On the last day I gave him a basket of tomatoes and his immediate response was, “Have you painted these?” A few days later I received an email with several paintings of my tomatoes (Aunt Ruby featured prominently) and a single comment, “Delicious.” I assumed he meant the tomatoes, but his paintings deserved the same comment.

These days the tomatoes may show up in my paintings in a bowl, or sometimes just a single perfect round object sitting on a tabletop. I am fascinated by their range and subtlety of colors. In one very detailed grisaille still-life the central object is a small bowl of beautiful tomatoes. I still smack my lips when I look at it. Sometimes, in the summer, when I paint at the Mission Viejo house, I take a break and work (hardly real work) in the garden for a while, snacking on tomatoes and fresh basil.

Like a delicious abstract painting, Big Rainbow, another of my favorites, has brilliant red stripes cutting across its gold flesh; it’s meaty and juicy.  It was introduced to Seed Savers Exchange in 1983 by Dorothy Beiswenger from Polk County, Minnesota. The best dish I can concoct in five minutes from my summer garden is a few slices of rainbow colored tomatoes interlaced with the first four tender leaves from fresh sweet basil, drizzled with olive oil, finished with a dash of ground pepper or diced chives. The explosion in your mouth is like a sip of fine aged wine; instantly I have the taste of the whole summer inside my mouth. Whoever said you couldn’t eat your inspiration?