Peach Genesis

This is, more than anything else, a self portrait that is based on the distinctly renaissance idea and imagery of “vanitas” – a comment on the temporal nature of life and its inevitable conclusion. Peaches are, of course, a wonderful fruit that have the challenge for painters of being deeply hued and yet softened by that special “fuzz”. I have in my studio this skull given to me by the son of a physician and it might be obvious to some that the skull is “eating a peach” – a solid reference to the Allman Bros. album “Eat a Peach” released after the death of Duane Allman.
Beneath that scenario is an almost totally abstracted image of a man stretched out ala Leonardo’s sketch book image of the proportions of man in a circle. That is me.
The “drawn”peaches on the bottom are the “negative” of the peaches on top.