I am pleased to join with The Mulberri Bush, and introduce a new retail locale carrying Decadence-N-decay Art. As we prepare to phase out summer, I am celebrating the fresh fruits of the seasons. Just this morning we cut open a ripe pineapple before our last summer day at the waterpark.
"Plucked Pineapple", oils on canvas, Janelle Jensen Fritz, 2003
Now at The Mulberri Bush, -home decor market. 138 Olive Street, Keller TX 817-201-2728
There is something exotic and inviting about a pineapple. In my life as a #mommantheburbs I often need symbolic reminders of those simple and sweet indulgences from tropical memories to elevate a moment of daily grind reality. "Plucked Pineapple" expresses the fading memory of my visit to The Dole Pineapple Company in Hawaii where I sampled an array of decadent pineapple delights with abandoned caution and the bod of a pre-baby 18 year old. I painted "Plucked Pineapple" far-away from paradise in Massachusetts, for our windowless kitchen in our tiny grad-school condo.
Sometime afterwards I stumbled into the story of Georgia O'Keefe's visit to Hawaii. In 1939 The Hawaiian Pineapple Company (precurser to Dole), commissioned O'Keefe to visit Hawaii in order to create two paintings for them to use in their advertising. Once arriving, and being presented with a harvested pineapple to paint, something about her 'free-spirit-artist' repelled the notion of being corralled into a specific directive in subject matter. While in Hawaii she created many works capturing the botanical beauty of the islands, but never painted the works she was enlisted to produce. It wasn't until The Hawaiian Pineapple Company shipped a budding pineapple plant to her New York studio that she completed the work. Pineapple Bud, oil on canvas, Georgia O'Keefe, 1939.
I found it humorously ironic that I unknowingly painted the very thing that Georgia herself had resisted.
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| Pineapple Bud, oil on canvas, Georgia O'Keefe, 1939 |
