A class with Rachael McCampbell - Pumpkins and Lemons Together

Rachael McCampbell is a local artist.  She actually goes to our church.  Funny how our church is so small and yet there are so many people there who are known locally and nationally - and some even internationally - for either their music, art or other gifts.  Rachael is one of those folks.  She taught an acrylic class at Owl's Hill Nature Center.  It was just a one day class, but I really enjoyed it, and more importantly, I learned from it. We painted a still life, and we experimented with various Golden acrylic materials.

That was over a month ago (November 18, 2017), and I just now realized I have not written anything about it here on my blog.  I enjoyed working with Rachael so much that I signed up for a series of weekly classes she will start in January.  I'm looking forward to that.  My sister, Beth, from Georgia is coming up here for a couple months and plans to take the class with me.

Below is my still life painting.  It's acrylic on a 16 x 20 gessoboard.  As you can see, I already have it framed and hanging on the wall.  I like it.  The largest pumpkin in the actual still life that we used as a reference was a white one, but I'm not a fan of white pumpkins.  So I added orange in the creases of the pumpkin to give it more color.  I'm pleased with how it looks.

It was fun working with acrylic paint again.  I got right back into it fairly easily.  My only hesitation in loving this painting is that pumpkins and lemons don't really "go" together.  Pumpkins are a fall crop in cooler climates.  Lemons are grown in warmer climates.  While the colors are nice together, the combination of the two in a still life just doesn't feel harmonious to me.

"November Harvest" acrylics on 16 x 20 gessoboard

November Harvest

A trio of pumpkins

A quartet of lemons 

Orange and yellow and white

A cool weather vine

A warm climate tree

A sweet and a sour bite.

In writing the poem to go with the painting, I realized anew how writing poetry to go with a painting forces me to look at it more closely and to think about it more deeply.  Before writing the poem, I knew that the combination of pumpkins and lemons seemed off to me.  Writing the poem made me REALLY work through WHY the combination nagged at me.  It was because they don't naturally occur together.  However, through the poem, I could work through those nagging feelings.  Of course I realize in today's markets, one can buy at the same time a variety of vegetables and/or fruits grown in just about any climate in the world. So perhaps my "nagging feeling" is outdated.