Pair of Christmas Lima Beans

Pair of Christmas Lima Beans
Oil pastels, gesso, wood
17 3/4 H x 17 9/16 W x 1 3/4 D
Sold

This painting has been in progress for a long time. I began working on it in June 2012 when I was on vacation in Minnesota. Well, that's when the actual application of oil pastel began. Several weeks before that I sprouted the seeds and photographed them, then I sketched out the composition in the approximate size that I liked before I assembled the substrate from recycled pallet wood. 

This is by far one of my favorite paintings to date. I love the colors and the composition, and I love how the grain of the wood is still visible through the shading in the background. To me it hints at an elderly couple doing a dance across time, like the ritual of planting seeds year after year for more than a century. Slow Food USA dates the use of the Christmas Lima Bean in food to 1840, stating that it was popular in the southwestern United States.  http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/ark_product_detail/christmas_lima_bean/

The substrate and the outer frame are made from recycled pallet wood and the inner frame is made from lath board recovered from a house my cousin was remodeling.