Lessons from Mother Nature

Life goes on-
I know I say this often
However, it is true 

Life’s a precarious business
Gardening can teach you about these things

Planting a seedling is like
Giving birth to a new being
It’s survival depends on care and feeding
Good soil and fertilizer
The right amount of water and sunshine
All in the proper balance 
Gives this little plant a chance
To grow healthy and strong

As it grows
It needs a support structure
Weeds pulled
And protection from predators

I come to this garden daily
I talk to the plants as if they are my children
Words of encouragement and
Gentle touches help pollination

Plants grow so slowly
We cannot watch the process
And yet suddenly they are grown
Flowers bloom and fruit is produced!
It feels like magic 
This is the process of life.

I harvest the fruit and give thanks
For the flavors of freshness 
You can taste the sunshine and earthiness

There is no comparison
To the satisfaction of this process
I feel nourished 
As I have given nourishment to this garden.
It is a symbiotic relationship
And life goes on

By Cheryl McDonald 2024©

This new art piece came together in a way I have not worked in for a long time. It started with a ripe, lovely tomato with a strange stem that my daughter brought home from the grocery store. I have not done colored pencil drawings in a while and I love the brightness of the color of ripe tomatoes. I have painted them many times. 

So I set it on my drawing table and went through the many steps to create the rich colors and textures in colored pencil onto a fairly large sheet of watercolor paper. And to my surprise, it turned out pretty good! Muscle memory brought me to a decent product.

Well then, what was I to do with the rest of this paper? Good watercolor paper is not cheap and I didn’t want to waste it, so I decided to add to it. I always prefer to start with good paper and tools even though sometimes I don’t end up with a winning project. Sometimes it goes to recycling or into the bin of current rejects. This is where I had to think, imagine, and create. I most often these days come up with the whole image in advance, laying it all out on sketch paper first, however, in my early days of art-making I often started with one item and then had to build around it, which is kind of fun because you have to think about background, foreground, perspective, and how all of these things have to fit with what you have already drawn. It can be a little intimidating.

It all started with a comment someone made about the tomato, that it looked kind of like the poison apple in the Snow White fairytale, and this thought had been in the back of my head already. So how could I make it a story and give it a little mystery too? 

I decided to build a garden around it. A neighbor had a remainder of a tangled garden with a tomato plant that was still trying to produce something, and I asked for a cutting of the plant so I could make some realistic-looking leaves, stems, and flowers for my tangled tomato garden. I wanted to give this giant beautiful tomato a hiding place, where it might be discovered by surprise.

As I was drawing the garden, I started thinking about the life of a tomato and how some of the leaves I had taken had bites taken out of them, aha! Tomato Horned Worms! Those big fat green worms that would like nothing better than to eat every leaf from your tomato plants. So I added one of those, and then it occurred to me that tomato worms have another part of their life cycle, they go into cocoons and emerge as Five-spotted Hawk Moths, so I added one of those. So this garden painting encompasses the life cycles of tomatoes and their main predator. The whole painting was done in a mixed media of colored pencil and watercolor and it was a new theme for me to work with.

It still fits in with my philosophy of living which is about learning to live with change and challenges. We can’t let big fat tomato worms ruin our day. Look for the positives and send that tomato worm to the trash bin!

I hope this was an interesting view into the process of art making, I just wanted to share a little of the mystery with you. 

What mysteries are you working on these days?

Thanks for reading and 

Have a Happy Day!

Cheryl

By the way, vote on Tuesday, November 5th, and please for the sake of this world, vote to keep this country as a free democracy.