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Sharon’s Suggestion

When I showed my two orchard paintings, Sharon, a real life friend and most active blog commenter, suggested I paint a stonefruit orchard in full spring color.

I told her that those orchards just aren’t in my normal routes.

Then, I went to Fresno for a day. The plums (white blossoms) were finished blooming, but there were some peach orchards still going strong. Since I prefer backroads to the dreaded State Highway 99*, I was able to find a blooming orchard with a shoulder to pull over and take a few photos.

Oops. I was in a hurry. Sitting on the side of the road while traffic blazes past isn’t conducive to careful framing of one’s photographic shots.

There were better orchards, but a ditch separated them from the road. AND, I didn’t think of it at first. Probably should have taken photos on the way to Fres-yes instead of waiting until I was on the way home. Maybe I need a boss.

Pretending that I had a boss who told me to get crackin’, I messed around with the photos and came up with this beginning.

I bet this orchard painting will sell quicker than the walnuts or the olives.

THANK YOU, SHARON!

*99 is said to be the darkest highway and the most deadly of all state highways: a study says “Highway 99, a 424-mile road that runs through the state’s Central Valley, leads the country for most fatal crashes per one hundred miles”. But that doesn’t matter, because we will get a bullet train from Modesto to Bakersfield some time in the next 50 years or so. You should see the stone-henge type concrete supports, complete with graffiti along the route. . . lovely fixtures in Central California for almost a decade now. As I said Friday, California is a special kind of stupid.

2 Comments

  1. You are most welcome, my friend! And I’m flattered that any artist would take a suggestion from me, who is visual-artistically-challenged! (I only need to remind you of the family crest challenge, eh?)
    Bullet train? You mean the Slow Speed Train to Nowhere? Bwa-ha-ha-ha! It may be finished in time for my great-grandchildren to use. But I don’t even have children (and it’s long too late for that option), so you know how realistic that scenario is!

    • Sharon, the opinions of the potential buying public are Very Important to me, more so than the opinions of the Art World. That’s why I sell my work in stores rather than galleries (okay, well, there aren’t any for-profit galleries in Tulare County), and that’s why I don’t spend time (and money) entering juried and judged contests.

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