end of summer figs and plums
process diary > sketchbook
one of my favorite things about living in turkey is the bounty and sheer abundance of fruit. the land is juicy and ripe. i don’t think i’ve ever tasted figs — real figs — until living here. figs were expensive and bad in new york, but here they are both ordinary and magnificent. (there are fig trees, for example, on my way to the neighborhood trash can). two years ago, when we took a roadtrip along the three seas of this country, the little villages of the southern coast were so full of fruit trees — figs, pomegranates, and citrus — that i felt as though i could simply reach out an arm from the car window, and pluck a full basket’s worth of them.
there’s a tiny fruit stand in front of the fish market in our neighborhood, and, all summer long, that’s where we’ve been buying whole kilos of figs and plums and peaches. but now that fall is settling in istanbul — with sudden thunderstorms, and cool gusts of wind, i feel both relieved and bittersweet about saying goodbye to the summer fruit.
so, after eating a whole summer’s worth of figs — i finally decided to paint them.
this was my first fruit still life in god knows how long. (was it… these pomegranates from naxos island?)
(i do also remember growing attached to this cactus fruit i plucked in santorini, and keeping it on my windowsill like a pet, until it started to deflat and beg to be eaten or buried.)
then, in 2020, while living in berlin, i painted a fig while on hold / speaking to robots on the phone. i captured it in a post titled: german bureaucracy, turkish figs.
but… those were all digital paintings, and i have to say that painting on paper is a different experience, entirely. i felt as though i climbed inside the walls of the figs while painting. i see lots that i could improve on, technique-wise, but for now, i’m pleased. it was almost as pleasurable as eating them. a visual feast.
