Oil Painting - 'Sweet Sixteen'
76 cm by 91 cm (Chicken Balls Take-Out Series)

 

Most of you will know me as a potter, but you may like to know that my first three years of formal education at the Alberta College of Art were as a painter. Even while studying ceramics, I took a lot of time for drawing and painting.

I did stop painting in 1969, and did not return to it until 1980. Those were very busy years. I started a ceramics business in Calgary, and we moved to Ontario in 1973 and started a whole new direction with porcelain as my medium.

Since 1980, I have routinely taken blocks of time to pursue my painting interests. The subject matter has been varied, but since 1984 it has almost exclusively been the food that we in North America choose to eat and sometimes what it is served on. In my village, Chinette is considered normal and bread is white.

Why paint food, and why junk food? Why not!

It is very prevalent, so colorful and so intriguing, an artist should record it. Artists in all times have used what is at hand to provide them with the challenges of good art making. One of my painting instructors, Dr. Illingsworth Kerr, used to rant endlessly about many artists that he knew. He felt that they looked in the most obscure places for their subject matter, when really good stuff was just beneath their noses. I agree.

In light of that, here are a few words about these two series of paintings. The Buffet series was done from visits to a well known Belleville Chinese food eatery. The Take-out series is an on going look at the industrial food many of us have ordered in, even though we know better. Reference is made to the ‘bachelor service’ of eating out of the pan, or the container the food product came in.

Anything in the Buffet series is food that I actually saw people eating. I did not make any of it up. I actually saw a man eat a desert of two kinds of melon and some onion rings. I saw a young man take a heaping pile of chicken balls, cover them with red sauce and place a huge round of white bread on the top. The buffet is Chinese food all right, with Jell-o, French fries, onion rings, sausages, bacon and pastrami. It has been lowered in standard from perhaps the best food in the world to something that barely resembles the original. Too bad, but in Belleville, the place is hopping busy, filled to overflowing with people looking for lots to eat at bargain prices.

I am recording what I see.

Harlan.

 

Above: Oil Painting - 'Self Portrait'
60 cm by 47 cm
(for Maureen on April 1st, 2005)
NFS