Monday, May 16, 2011

Grape Jelly - by Darren Maurer

5" x 5"


I saw this little blob of grape jelly a few mornings ago and noticed how cool it looked. The hot white highlights, the reflected cool blue light on the shadowed side, the deep dark almost black areas within the heart of the blob, the areas where light is captured inside the jelly like the finest gem stone and screams out with the most intense shade of red-violet ever seen. Now that is one cool blob of grape jelly! When I started my blog page over five years ago the one thing I wanted to project to visitors was the process of "seeing.....and not just looking". I call it seeing the "extraordinary within the ordinary". Many people just look and don't really see all the great things around them. All people have their own ideas of what around them is great to see. My family and friends would be the first to attest in my uncanny ability to see the extraordinary within the ordinary.....or at least what is extraordinary to me. As they are all appalled thinking to themselves, "What?" they have witnessed me standing on chairs and table tops in restaurants taking photos of plates of food, silverware, ketchup bottles, salt and pepper shakers, shadows from a window blind raking across a place setting. They have watched me paint items from grocery store shelves, half eaten pieces of watermelon, cereal bowls left behind after breakfast, slobbery lollipops discarded by children, and the foamy rich little brown bubbles on the surface of a freshly poured cup of hot chocolate. They have seen completed commission pieces such as a weed emerging from a crack in a sidewalk, a favorite glass of wine backlit from a nearby window, tricycles, game boards, and slices of pizza. It seems the ideas for painting subjects from "seeing" the coolness in everyday ordinary items around me will never cease. Even a little blob of grape jelly dropped onto a countertop will do. You have to "see" it, or at any rate, I have to see it and then show it to you. I was reminded of all this yesterday when my youngest and now seventeen year old daughter walked into my studio and said, "Tell me you're not painting a little blob of jelly?" I was....and now I'm showing it to all of you. I want to thank the thousands and thousands of people that have followed this blog for the past five plus years. I'll keep painting. This painting will be available later this summer beginning in July.

4 Comments:

Blogger Caroline Peña Bray said...

Brilliantly put, Darren, the 'seeing' is what makes your work so interesting. And it's great to witness how the small, simple things in life can bring so much pleasure if only we take the time to 'see' them, think about them and 'feel' them.

Love this blob of jelly - well executed but again, it's the composition that makes it a real winner.

1:55 AM  
Blogger John Vander Stelt said...

Great stuff, and I can so relate. My kids have seen me stop along side of the road on a frigid Minnesota highway to shoot reference photos of a rusty old horse sign. I got back in the van and they said, "Nobody else has a crazy dad who does that". Not true! Darren, you do too! Seeing the beauty in the seemingly ordinary-that is so much fun. Thanks for sharing from your heart...and for your blob of jelly.

7:07 PM  
Blogger Darren Maurer said...

Thanks. I appreciate your comments.

John,
We should all go out to eat some evening and let our kids share their crazy dad stories! hahaha

9:43 PM  
Anonymous Shelley Whiting said...

That is very trompe o'leil. Love the shadows and reflections. The detail is amazing.

8:59 PM  

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