Still Lifes

For over a decade, my uncle Kaffe and I took a week a year to paint together my mother’s home in Big Sur.
Somehow Kaffe, jet-lagged from his long flight from London, always managed to be at the table first. By the time I arrived, invariably late even though I was coming from just across the street, he would have arranged all of my. mother’s beautiful colorful jars and vases just so and be well begun on his first painting of the day.
In the early days, my mother would paint with us too (in fact, I was the third wheel!) but at some point she shifted gears. Though she no longer joined us at the table, she prepared the space, brought the boxes of props down from the attic, and made us a pot of soup to enjoy while she was working. Her spirit is in every one of our paintings.
The still-life is such fun to paint because it allows us color, shape, and form to play with as we will. Half the fun is in the arranging! These paintings – some painted with Kaffe, and some inspired by those special sessions – were great fun to make, a celebration of the beauty of the ordinary – a jar, a vase, an apple on a patterned cloth.