[Aquanet] Bowl of Cherries

[patchapin at mindspring.com]

This painting is a sort of riddle, and perhaps I'm still trying to figure it 
out?  Between the contrasting colours and daring contours, it really reaches 
out and grabs your attention.

The cutwork cloth is masterfully accomplished, and the kind of thing that 
makes my palms itch, knowing I'd never be able to do it.  Cherries, ditto, 
although I wonder how and why they are all the same.

Where it fell down is the bowl, and part of me wants to say the artist got 
tired or got eyestrain, as it is not that the bowl is 'bad', it is not done 
with the same attention to crisp form and detail as the rest of the piece; 
the refractions inside and out are almost 'cloudy', although perhaps itis a 
pewter bowl?  You can certainly get by that part, and when I see that this 
is the first attempt at a half-sheet, maybe that's part of it?  (Yours truly 
takes a risk on anything less than a half-sheet).

If, as some painters have written, we give ourselves a problem and then 
attempt to solve it, this was a huge chunk of several different problems, 
and with the exception of the silly bowl, they all seem to have been pretty 
much solved.

pat chapin