Living Art

Everyone is ready for winter holidays with perfectly trimmed doorways and leaf free lawns in my neighborhood except for me. I'm still feeding the squirrels. To me this pumpkin living art. t looks different each day and the light of the day changes how it looks too. Sometimes it looks like a wise owl. Other times an exploded bottom.

I like to watch flowers wilt in the vase and the different stages of fruit molding in the fruit bowl. I'm not Dutch so I don't know exactly where this peculiar delight comes from. But, I do appreciate the great Dutch masters who painted many wonderful still lives of rotting fruit and flowers.


This is one of my favorites. I first saw this painting in the museum when I was 12 years old. I liked it then and I still like it.

Banquet Still Life, ca. 1660, by Abraham van Beyeren. Los Angeles County Museum of Art.