Playing around with Paul

This week I fooled around a bit with still life, using Cezanne’s “Still Life with Apples and Oranges” for inspiration. I’m not pretending to reproduce the original or even approximate it. I just wanted to see what I could learn from a masterwork. Cezanne’s painting is dense, even crowded, something I had never attempted in composing simpler, even minimalist, images. I also wanted to use what I had on hand, a limitation the painter didn’t have to deal with: You want colorfully-patterned drapery? Paint it in! I stole one of the dog’s blankets to cover the table and hung a well-used drop cloth behind it. Mary had scavenged some cool, old pitchers from charity shops, and I love this rabbit in repose with the world’s fattest carrot. The fruit was from our garden (the grapefruit), free oranges from the neighbors, and marked-down apples from the store. (An aside: The marked-down produce is always delicious, but like these apples, a bit off-color and out of round, the ugly ducklings of the fruit bin, and yet they make beautiful subjects that I can eat when I’m finished shooting.)

A swing and a miss! Keep playing.

I had the most difficulty arranging everything in a pleasing composition. I made several attempts, but nothing I was happy with. They were too formal or just poor copies of Cezanne, and finally Mary came out into the garage, moved some things around, pointed out that there was a lot going on in what I had, and told me to just keep playing around. And that “playing around” is really the key. It’s attempt after attempt, moving things around, changing the angle of the camera, using a reflector, adding another apple or orange, turning each this way or that.

This is the result. When I look at it now, I see things I might do differently, but I also notice that my eye starts with the rabbit who points to the carrot that points me to the an orange that moves me from one clump of fruit to the next, all the way ’round to the pitcher. And that wouldn’t have happened without playing around.