"Cantaloupe & Peaches"

Private Collection, Ft. Worth, Texas

This 6 x 8 inch oil is the companion piece to "Silver Cup & Peaches", sent to Galerie Kornye West recently for their annual Fall Art Walk.

Of the two, this was painted first, as an homage to Chardin. His painting, "The Cut Melon", remains one of my favorites.

As I tried to set up the cantaloupe so that it would have a shadow pattern similar to the original, I received my first "aha!" surprise from the great Master. It was impossible to set it up in the same way, tho I tried many times. With my daylight source coming first from the right, then from the left, moving the cantaloupe slice this way and that, it slowly occurred to me that Monsieur Chardin painted reality as he wanted to see it, not necessarily as it was.

His work reminded me that representational art is not simply about copying, but about creating something poetic with the look of reality.

As Degas said "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."