Summer Pears II

We have a pear tree in our yard. It's one of those 4-way grafts that gives you four varieties of pears on one tree, except that the bottom variety didn't get enough light, so it died.  At any rate there are two yellow varieties and one bright red one.

The tree provides me with many opportunities to photograph the fruit and use it as a reference for my paintings.

After discovering Brenda Swenson's video on negative painting, I started a series of negative pear paintings. This is the second in that series.

I thoroughly enjoy painting from the negative side.  Negative painting is a method of depicting a subject without actually painting the subject.  Instead, the artist paints the (negative) space between the objects, building up layers of color and outlining the subject of the painting.

This method of painting is very different from the way I usually approach a subject. Because I am not trying to make an accurate representation of the actual object, I feel very free to use colors that I might not usually combine.  As one layer builds upon another, the colors blend and make unexpected variations.  

The final result of a negative painting can be

surprising, and I am often delighted by the unexpected result.