One Tomato

Three days before she passed away a couple of years ago, my late wife, Sam, was in her happy place, her garden. I have tried to keep that garden going, but for a gardening dummy, it’s not easy. Almost like the way I learned to paint, I’m learning to garden by the seat of my pants. Sam grew mostly flowers, but we usually had a few tomato plants. While I know that rain is good for the garden, we had way too much rain last summer. The flowering plants (I don’t know the names of most of them) mostly thrived, but the tomatoes didn’t. We ended up with one tomato that wasn’t rotten.

I didn’t want to eat it (right away), so I did a small still-life. To add some color I painted a weathered wood blue background, but the real color came from the rich red of the tomato, and a napkin that Sam picked out in a small shop in Bayeux, Normandy. I like to think that Sam is wandering around a garden somewhere now with Claude Monet, whose garden we visited in Giverny. She’s probably smiling about the tomato painting, and would have wanted me to share it, so here it is. (She also would not have let me sell it!)

Joe Seme

Original 5.5 x 10″
$1400
SOLD

Giclee print on canvas
5.5 x 10”
Limited Edition of 300 S/N
$85 each + $15 Shipping