What’s your first thought when you look at this? What would you name this painting?
“Super Foods” by Beverly Shipko, Oil on cradled wood panel, 5 x 7 inches
Seriously, I would love to hear from you. So please jot down your initial thoughts about this image before you read the rest of this blog and you’re biased by my perspective.
Of course, I’m sensitized to vending images since I’ve painted quite a few, such as Icons of the Chip World and Icons of the Candy World. Then there’s my single candy bar vending series of five 20 x 10 inch paintings – so far.
And to think these paintings were inspired by my first vending machine painting during the September 2015 Challenge. If you read the original blog post about the process, you’ll see how difficult the first one was and how conflicted I felt about using so much black. I wrote about my lessons learned from that long, frustrating day. I’ve come a long way.
Did I ever mention that my husband Jay’s first marketing job was in the Food Service Division of Kraft General Foods, where he worked on… vending? Then he went to Pepsi and where he was in charge of several vending initiatives.
Back to the painting itself. Super Foods is a working title. At first I was just going to call this Broccoli, setting up different expectations. Then I tried include the word vending. Webmaster Laura came up with More Green Makes Cents. Very clever but not me.
I wanted to capture the conflicting emotions a person might feel when confronted by these vending choices in real life. How would you feel? Maybe:
- Disgust at the thought of eating broccoli at all.
- Guilt at choosing candy over healthy food.
- Giddiness at the absurdity of it all.
- Happiness at saving 25¢ by passing up sugary candy in favor of a healthy super food, which no kid would do in their right mind (unless they’re a vegetarian or never had candy in their life!).
Last year I came across a poorly stocked vending machine and took photos of the empty rows. I used one as my base. Then I bought a stalk of broccoli, took more photos, and made a little collage – which goes to show how low tech I am. Luckily I prepared everything in December since this was time consuming.
I began with a detailed drawing, eliminated the white labels, and decided on a broccoli price. (Is price an indicator of quality here?) Then I painted the background black.
The masonite board on my easel looked a little different this time. It included larger broccoli shots and my first vending painting as reference materials.
Good thing I saved this painting until the last day. I suspected it was a 2 day painting. Here’s where I stood at the end of yesterday (with an eye doctor’s appointment! No dilation after all).
Today I got a late start since I had a haircut in the morning (my lady is taking a 3 week vacation). Real life is now officially interfering with my painting life. The M&Ms wrapper took a long time with all the detail and variety of colors (translation: lots of brush cleaning to keep the colors clean). I earned my dinner break.
There were little kinks along the way, like the Twix metallic paint dried unexpectedly fast while I was eating, so I had to repaint areas. Getting the rings right was hard since they were so thin. A moment of unsteadiness would turn into 20 minutes of repairing a misstep.
While some of you may have been expecting me to end the Challenge with a gooey cake, this choice feels right to me. In a way, I came full circle. Yet I feel like Super Foods opened up potential new conceptual avenues to explore, which is one of my objectives for this Challenge.
Certainly Super Foods moves you away from the nostalgia of an Oreo Cookie. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Thoughts?
Tomorrow I’ll be putting together a collage of all 30 Challenge paintings. Hope you stop by to see it. It’s almost a piece of artwork in its own right.
