Is there any fruit more storied than the apple? Perhaps the mystique surrounding the apple began in the Garden of Eden. In Eden, fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, presumed to be the apple, was the one forbidden fruit. And of course it proved to be the most enticing. We have all grown up seeing images of Eve proffering an apple to Adam. A simple red orb, yet laden with so much meaning.
Apples have figured in many historic moments. Isaac Newton had a famous encounter with an apple. It's said that his realization about gravity happened because he was hit in the head by an apple falling from a tree. William Tell earned freedom from his captors by shooting an apple off of his son's head, using his bow and arrow. And the list goes on.
Leaving aside the symbolism of apples, I love to paint them simply for their color and shape. It's a challenge to depict a sphere correctly, showing its volume and weight. No mere red circles these! Finding the turns of the planes in a rounded fruit is a key to showing its three dimensionality. Or as painters say, "When the plane changes, the color changes."
Patrick George taught his art students that they should "recognize the apples as some sort of an irregular solid, made up of a succession of planes." Easier said than done! I'm illustrating this post with some of my recent efforts. These are small paintings, quick studies. My aim was to lay the paint and leave it, to avoid over-working, and to leave the marks of the initial drawing visible as a sign of the process. Hope you'll enjoy taking a look.
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