Each time I spend a substantial stretch away from home, some buttons in me get reset. From Copenhagen to Prague, from Tokyo to Beijing, distance and a string of museum visits kept shifting how I see things. When I finally came home, the studio looked slightly strange. Ideas that felt urgent before the trip sat there like notes written by someone else. I usually need a round of cleaning and reorganizing before I can find the mindset for painting again.

Before I left, I had been deep in pears. There were drafts and unfinished paintings waiting. I struggled to return to them. It took quite a while to find the mood to sit down and finish what I had started. Meanwhile it became very clear that I was not in the pear mood anymore.

The first of these is a watercolor and pencil piece. Before the trip, I finished the pencil draft, and had a few plans for the coloring. Looking at it now, I would rather it stay in that monochromatic vibe. The only parts I made saturated arethe pear and the knife. In Chinese, pear 梨 (lí) shares its sound with 离 (lí), to leave, and 分梨 (fēn lí), “to divide a pear,” sounds exactly like 分离 (fēnlí), “separation.”. That is why halved pears carry a small domestic superstition: you don’t split a pear with someone you don’t want to part from. The woman looks worried, almost miserable, staring at the halved pear on the table. The pear pattern on the wall behind her echoes what is going on in her mind: a repetition of li, li, … pear, parting, pear, parting. I hoped the painting would tell a story. I also hoped it would tell, a little sideways, my own separation from the theme. The pears are still there, printed all over the wall behind her, but the one in front of her has already been cut.

The second painting introduces a new character. A rabbit has found a pear. The rabbit is based on a stuffed animal of mine named Blue. Blue has accompanied me for many years, it was fun to bring him to life a little and put him in a painting. I think of this one as a transition. The pear is still in the picture, but it has been handed over.

The third is a girl and a rabbit. In the draft, it was a girl holding a pear before the trip, but rabbit completes the design so much better. I have a fondness for rabbits; it has been my nickname in the family for as long as I can remember. The girl is imagined, though she carries a vague resemblance to a much earlier version of me. So I am going to paint myself either way, as the girl, or as the rabbit.

New adventures, hopping on.

This sits in a line with Juggling a Few Pears, Pear Maniac Continued, and Picasso and Pears.