Summer Treats

Summer Treats
Diptych
Gouache and acrylic on paper mounted on birch panels
12" H x 24" W
2012

(Oops, had to make a revision. Woke up this morning and decided it needed more work, so the top image is now really the finished piece. Really.)

The 8th from the series Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie.

This is another one of those junior high school memories. I left Taiwan right after I graduated from junior high (which went through 9th grade), so it's not surprising that so many of these pieces are drawn from memories from that time. The tropics of cancer goes through the southern part of Taiwan, which makes it officially tropical in the south and sub-tropical in the north. But why quibble with such subtle distinctions? It was extremely HOT & HUMID all over the island in the summer time, south or north. One of my favorite things to do is to stop in at the shaved ice shops for a bowl of shaved ice, and we did that almost daily after school, on our way to the bus stop.

Shaved ice in Taiwan isn't like shaved ice here on the continental US or in Hawaii. As far as I can tell, the American shaved ice is shaved ice topped only with syrup, which is so INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTINGLY INFERIOR to the kind you get in Taiwan, topped with all kinds of delicious treats, my favorite being flan, with red beans being a second favorite.

When I first came to the US, I don't think you could even get the American version of shaved ice on the continental US at all. Now I see it, but the syrupy stuff just doesn't appeal to me. Instead, I get to have ice cream sundaes, and milkshakes! I remember my American mom giving everyone milkshakes for dinner one night, when it was really hot. Another time, I had a giant hamberger, followed by a giant sundae!

Ice cream was unusual in Taiwan (when I was growing up). It was a rare treat that we got when we went to the movies, which wasn't very often. When I was a little older (8th or 9th grade), my uncle Lee took us kids to an ice cream shop, and I had a banana split (called a banana boat in Taiwan). I think that may have been the only time I was in an ice cream shop in Taiwan.

I started this early in August when Portland was having its hottest weather in 2012, and naturally, thoughts turn to summer treats — the shaved ice & ice cream, of course, lotus & dahlia, butterflies and a lace parasol to protect against the sun. Here's the progression, with the finished piece at the top.

And I'm very glad that I did not forget the butterflies antennae.

Gifts of Winter

Gifts of Winter
Diptych
Gouache and acrylic on paper mounted on birch panels
24" h x 12" W
2012

The 7th from the series Red Bean Paste and Apple Pie.

The chestnut and the batnut (water caltrop). Neither are nuts, but are both starchy fruit. To me, they're both associated with winter, cold weather, rain, fire, and general deliciousness.

Batnut, which is often confused with water chestnut (talk about a double misnomer) is the fruit of the water caltrop, a water plant. It has a blackish hard shell with very pointy ends. You must skillfully bite each in half in the middle, and if you do it right, the white flesh would pop out from each half. If you don't crack it just right, much of the meat can be stuck in the pointy ends and you have to dig it out. This was a favorite winter snack food in Taiwan -- we often sat around eating batnuts while watching tv on cold, wintery nights. I missed it terribly for a long time, and the first time I returned to Taiwan in the winter time, my mother bought me some. They were no longer being freshly cooked and sold by street vendors, and the pre-cooked nuts were disappointing. I haven't really wanted any since, and I do find that a bit sad. I think next time I go back in the winter, I should try them again.

The chestnut is the winter holiday thing — stuffed in turkeys and I always associate it with Christmas because of that song. As I was researching this piece, I found out that a neighbor down the street has a pair (you need two to have fruit), and she said that I could have as many as I want, as they haven't figured out how to get past the prickly shells! So I shall experiment with that this winter.

Here's how the piece progressed. In contrast to the previous 6 pieces, I did not have this piece fully sketched out before I started. I knew some elements — that it would be vertical, that it would have water & the batnut in the bottom panel and the chestnut in the top, that there would have a snowflake-like structure surrounded by fire in the middle. But that was it.

The snowflake, waves and the water caltrop started to go in first, followed by the stars of a cold, snowy, winter night:

The fire, the mountains, the duckweed:

At this point, I was very unhappy with the piece. I thought the bottom half was very uninteresting. After playing around with different ideas, I decided to add a favorite winter bloom, the camelia. So here I've scrubbed out parts of the bottom panel and sketched in the camelia flowers:

Camelias are now fully operational, and the mountains got some snow:

The chestnuts are flying because it's a cold, blustery, winter day:

And of course, it would not be a Pacific Northwest winter without the rain. In Chinese, the constant light rain that we have in the PNW is called "furry rain," and I do love to render those fine, fine, furry lines. So I made it rain that furry rain, and the finished piece is the top image. And more camelias.