Have you ever noticed how many artists are either great cooks or gardeners, or both? Think about Monet’s garden, which is like a painting on a larger scale. I’ve met lots of artists who both grow flowers and paint them.
The connection with food is also interesting. We buy fresh fruits or vegetables, and then may paint them instead of—or before—eating them. I remember an artist who was featured in The Pastel Journal some years ago who did paintings of soup compositions. She piled all the ingredients for a soup around the gleaming soup pot and painted it.
When I was writing my book, I painted the same pear about twenty times as an illustration of surfaces. I used the same pastels for each painting, so that the surfaces could be easily compared. I didn’t want to paint or eat pears for a while afterwards.
Last fall, the workshop I taught in Júzcar, Spain at the Hotel Bandolero was special in part because of the fantastic food prepared by Chef Ivan Sastre. I knew before we arrived that he’d trained in London as a Cordon Bleu chef, but was surprised when I looked at the signature of a lovely pastel painting on the wall to find it was his. We persuaded him to leave the kitchen one day and accompany us on a painting trip, and enjoyed his painting and his company. We hope to get to do that again this coming October when we go back for two more workshops.
At the farewell dinner the night before our departure, Chef Ivan combined his love of art and his creativity in the kitchen with a special dessert which he presented to me. The palette and the brush handles are chocolate, the brush tips are white chocolate, and the “paints” are sorbets and syrups. It was as delicious as it was beautiful.
