Vegetables have been a long-time subject matter in my work. I was first drawn to paint them from one of our first times living in Tuscany. I visited the produce market on a daily basis. It was there that I was able to observe the gracious care the salesperson gave each vegetable. In Italy one can't handle the produce, she must allow the salesperson to choose the right one for her. Being a visitor I sometimes wasn’t given the best of what they had to offer. Everything was always presented in beautiful displays. The tomatoes were enormous with different shapes from our tomatoes in the USA. In many of the vegetable paintings, the subject matter is magnified resulting in a more abstract painting in which the viewer questions what it is he is actually looking at. After looking at a close up of one of my red onion paintings, a viewer told me he never knew how much color existed in the skin of an onion.

Like the vegetables, fruit has been a popular subject matter for me as well. In our travels abroad, the produce at the local markets always caught my attention. The plump figs and rounded pears offer beautiful elements to the composition of my paintings. Growing up in the South I had never seen a persimmon. Since living in California, I have been fascinated with the persimmon and how it remains on the tree long after the leaves have fallen. I enjoy depicting it's unique top "hat" of leaves. Fruit can also be reflective of the colors surrounding it. This makes for lots of interesting colors in a painting.