Snack Attack!

Snack Attack!
Diptych
Gouache and acrylic on paper mounted on birch panels
12" h x 24"
2012

I love the corn cross section as a halo, don't you?!

This is the second from the series Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie, a project I'm doing with the help of a 2012 RACC Project Grant. It will prove to be a pretty intense year of painting—15 paintings by the end of October. My painting hand is already in a sad shape from long hours of painting for days on end. I have started to use a support glove while I'm working, and a stabilizer when I'm not working. And of course, doing hand exercises whenever I can. Hopefully, I will keep this in check. There are also enough other things going on right now that I take a day or two off from painting periodically.

So this is how this painting started—my favorite Thunderbird (Scott Tracy) riding side-saddle on a grilled corn on the cob missile, and Mr. Spock surfing in on a Pringle.



The sacred geometry design here is based on the corn (but of course) and once again the 5-petal shape of the potato flower. And while I was concentrating on painting the sacred geometry, I spilled a jar of paint on Scott Tracy. I did my best to clean it up, but the stain is permanent (and will be fixed later).



Right by the front gate of the junior high I attended in Taiwan, there was this vendor who sold freshly grilled corn on the cob (with lots of hot sauce!). He was there everyday when school let out. My friends and I would each get a corn on the cob and would eat them as we walked to our respective bus stops (absolutely contrary to what we had been taught—to never eat while walking). I would get home just in time to catch the Thunderbirds, a British puppet sci-fi show. After I came to the US, my American mom would always give me a small bowl of Pringles as a snack after I got home from high school, and I could watch Star Trek before dinner.



The finished piece is the top image.