WARNING: THIS BLOG MAY BE HARMFUL TO YOUR HEALTH
Sugar, flour and butter. In other words this is why I ultimately became a painter instead of a pastry chef. It was fundamentally in order to avoid the inevitable obesity that would ensue. The proverbial battle of the bulge is still an issue but it’s just not all out war. After all you, can’t eat paint. This photograph was taken outside of the Magnolia Bakery in New York where I had to wipe the drool and fingerprints off of the glass before taking the picture. The line out the door was so long that the photograph is all I got, but it did save me about 1,000 calories.
I’ve been pondering the shared alchemy of baking vs. painting and how avoidance of one may have led to the other. My relationship with sugar is a bit addictive, but you can say the same thing about painting. They both require mixing together individual ingredients with specialized tools and technical skill in order to achieve success.
Before becoming a painter I did make a foray into the food service industry. For five years I traveled to the homes of my clients loaded down with sacks filled with, among other ingredients, bright orange carrots, deep green chard, tangy goat cheese and sweet ripe strawberries. I would pile these ingredients onto the counter where the mixed aromas of the fresh veggies created an earthy perfume that I adore. Then I would set about transforming these ingredients into a week of meals. This process involved all of my senses: the bumpy skins of the turnips; the bright reds, greens and yellows of the veggies; the sizzle of sautéing; oh the smells (sautéed onions and mushrooms in butter is my favorite); and, of course, taste, required to tweak the seasoning in each dish to achieve a good balance of flavors.
Painting edged out cooking as a profession because while food is wonderfully nurturing and a creative endeavor, it involves hours of labor only to be gobbled up. Paintings are more enduring. Making them, it goes without saying, also involves plenty to look at and ponder with all the endless variations of red, yellow and blue, and plenty of mixing to get just the right shade. As for touch, there’s the raw canvas to run my hand over or glue or paint or paper to mess around with. Smells are a bit of an issue, more chemical in nature, but I’ve grown to love them all the same. And there is the sound of the brush across the canvas or ripping of paper. Taste? Well, no blue tongue for me.
When I became a full-time painter the question that a number of people asked me was what kind of food would I paint. It did seem like the natural progression. I once painted a still life that included a quarter of a watermelon, but that was early on. I was so slow at painting then that the melon began to liquefy before I finished.
So getting back to alchemy, baking (and cooking) and painting it seems to me are all about the same thing, taking raw ingredients and transforming them into an entirely different thing, albeit one is edible and one is not. What’s wonderful is that I can make a painting, hang it on the wall, bake a cake, sit down and eat it while pondering the painting. This is now my preferred way to mix food and art. After all, it allows me to have my cake and eat it too, which is a kind of spiritual experience.
Sugar, flour and butter. In other words this is why I ultimately became a painter instead of a pastry chef. It was fundamentally in order to avoid the inevitable obesity that would ensue. The proverbial battle of the bulge is still an issue but it’s just not all out war. After all you, can’t eat paint. This photograph was taken outside of the Magnolia Bakery in New York where I had to wipe the drool and fingerprints off of the glass before taking the picture. The line out the door was so long that the photograph is all I got, but it did save me about 1,000 calories.
I’ve been pondering the shared alchemy of baking vs. painting and how avoidance of one may have led to the other. My relationship with sugar is a bit addictive, but you can say the same thing about painting. They both require mixing together individual ingredients with specialized tools and technical skill in order to achieve success.
Before becoming a painter I did make a foray into the food service industry. For five years I traveled to the homes of my clients loaded down with sacks filled with, among other ingredients, bright orange carrots, deep green chard, tangy goat cheese and sweet ripe strawberries. I would pile these ingredients onto the counter where the mixed aromas of the fresh veggies created an earthy perfume that I adore. Then I would set about transforming these ingredients into a week of meals. This process involved all of my senses: the bumpy skins of the turnips; the bright reds, greens and yellows of the veggies; the sizzle of sautéing; oh the smells (sautéed onions and mushrooms in butter is my favorite); and, of course, taste, required to tweak the seasoning in each dish to achieve a good balance of flavors.
Painting edged out cooking as a profession because while food is wonderfully nurturing and a creative endeavor, it involves hours of labor only to be gobbled up. Paintings are more enduring. Making them, it goes without saying, also involves plenty to look at and ponder with all the endless variations of red, yellow and blue, and plenty of mixing to get just the right shade. As for touch, there’s the raw canvas to run my hand over or glue or paint or paper to mess around with. Smells are a bit of an issue, more chemical in nature, but I’ve grown to love them all the same. And there is the sound of the brush across the canvas or ripping of paper. Taste? Well, no blue tongue for me.
When I became a full-time painter the question that a number of people asked me was what kind of food would I paint. It did seem like the natural progression. I once painted a still life that included a quarter of a watermelon, but that was early on. I was so slow at painting then that the melon began to liquefy before I finished.
So getting back to alchemy, baking (and cooking) and painting it seems to me are all about the same thing, taking raw ingredients and transforming them into an entirely different thing, albeit one is edible and one is not. What’s wonderful is that I can make a painting, hang it on the wall, bake a cake, sit down and eat it while pondering the painting. This is now my preferred way to mix food and art. After all, it allows me to have my cake and eat it too, which is a kind of spiritual experience.
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