Feasting on Art

As far as cookie recipes go, this little beauty has become my new holiday staple. I first tried this recipe by Gourmet a couple of years ago but made too many substitutions. The cookies were extremely disappointing and I filed the card away in my recipe box until a bag of what was described as ‘the best pistachios you will ever eat’ arrived from my mother. The cookies are extremely festive, dotted with ruby red berries and dusty green nuts and extremely moorish, one is never enough. I used salted pistachios and so omitted the salt from the recipe. The salted nuts are perfectly offset with the sweet and chewy cranberries while the butter-rich dough melts in your mouth.

Albert Anker, Still Life: Two Glass of Red Wine, a bottle of Wine; a Corkscrew and a Plate of Biscuits on a Tray, oil on canvas, 43 x 40cm, Private collection

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Growing up in the Midwest, cookies played a major part of my December. Throughout the holiday season, we gathered at my grandparent’s home for various parties and meals, always entering their home via the garage and past the cookies. Perched on the woodpile, the cookies lived in old tins between layers of wax paper and were kept cold by the Michigan winter. This holiday staple, a recipe by my grandmother, produces a soft and chewy cookie with a dense crumb and can easily be scaled up or down.

John Frederick Peto, The Poor Man’s Store (detail left), 1885
oil on canvas and panel, 90 x 65cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

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The peppermint candy, commonly associated with Christmas, makes for a mint-flecked ice cream that is both sweet and soothing. Around the holidays, after countless lavish meals and heavy desserts, a palette cleansing mint dessert perfectly fits the bill.

Joseph Decker, Hard Candy
oil on canvas, 22.8 x 35.5 cm, Private collection

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Adorning the cloaks and garments of royalty, the colour purple was often called imperial purple due to the close association. The word purple is a derivative of the original Greek porphura, the name of the Tyrian purple dye of antiquity extracted from a spiny snail. The pigment was extremely expensive to produce and only the very wealthy could afford clothes dyed the colour of grapes and plums. As a secondary colour, purple is wedged between red and blue on the colour wheel. The tones leaning towards the blue side of the spectrum were desired due to their association with the rare blue pigment favoured by artists and craftsmen.

Benjamin Roberts, Still life of plums with a cabbage white, 1862
oil on board, 16 x 21.5 cm, Private collection

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Currently on view at Brenda May Gallery is a curated group exhibition titled Art + Humour Me featuring the works of twenty Australian contemporary artists. In addition to a cardigan-wearing tree, the show includes artworks in a range of mediums from sculpture to video and naturally I was drawn to the three cast resin jelly mold sculptures by Janet Tavener (pictured below). For a serious laugh or at the very least a bit of a giggle visit Art + Humour Me on view at Brenda May Gallery (2 Danks St., Waterloo), on view until 7 May 2011.

I am very excited to announce that I will be curating an art + food exhibition next year at Brenda May Gallery. We are now accepting proposals from artists so please read the exhibition outline below and contact the Gallery with any questions or visit the submissions page for further details.

‘Art + Food – Beyond the Still Life’ – October 2012

This exhibition will consider the representation of food within the visual arts and beyond the standard still life tableaux. The consumption of food is a universally shared experience, enabling viewers to connect with the issues surrounding consumerism, food production and cultural identity, explored by the artists. ‘Art + Food – Beyond the Still Life’ will be on exhibition during the Sydney International Food Festival.
Proposals for this show must be received by Friday 27 July, 2012.

Janet Tavener, Baby Blue No 3, 2011
coloured resin, 12 x 12 x 12 cm, Brenda May Gallery

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