pomegranates from naxos island
my host gave me some fruit from her garden, and then I went to the market and bought more pomegraneates - which i discovered were grown locally, on naxos island. they are the greatest pomegraneates i have ever seen - golden skinned with seeds like cut rubies. they were so beautiful I had to draw them, and then once I drew them, I had to animate them so that I could capture that feeling of opening a pomegranate - as intact as a turtle’s shell; (except we don’t eat turtles… around here) and the act of opening a pomegraneate always feels like opening a treasure trove. (do you know how to treasure a treasure, let alone eat one???)
you open it (a knife is required) and your hands are bloody. like opening an oyster for the pearl. and I wonder, what would it be like to cherish the fruit we eat, as if we discovered them on a tree? drawing it reminded me of drawing a strawberry in japan - which I handpicked from a neighbor-dad’s garden, that one japanese spring.
I think I love pomegranates because they leave your hands - and clothes - and plates - stained with its blood. it is not a fruit that dies quietly. if i were a fruit, this is how I’d want to die, too.