The best lunch -- MoMA for Mommas

 

 Salad Obsession

(final version I think)

Acrylic on canvas

12 x 12 inches

Barbara Muir © 2012
SOLD ♥

My painting tonight is of lunch at the MoMA on
Mother's Day.  New Yorkers go crazy on Mother's
Day and the MoMA restaurant was packed.  Our
server was a young guy about Sam's age, and he
made me miss Sam.  He kept forgetting what we'd
ordered, and then apologizing.  But the egg salad sandwich
on a very fancy home made bun, and the salad
when it was delivered was both delicious and
gorgeous. A man at the next table sat with a child's
toy dog on his knee while the child ate.  A little
boy on the balcony squirreled in his chair and was
totally disenchanted until his parents order him a
massive chocolate sundae.  I enjoyed every detail of the meal
and the people in the gallery.

 Salad obsession

This painting commemorates that meal, and
started my salad obsession.  Not really of course
because I've been obsessed with salad since my
mother started serving it to us with her amazing
simple oil and vinegar dressing when I was a teenager.

 A few years ago -- maybe it's six years already -- we
decided to eat salad every night, and we do almost
every night.  We sometimes get off the hook if the dinner
has several veggie dishes.  But this painting started
what may turn into a salad series.

 "The Deep" and gratitude

I watched a little video from Deepak Chopra today,
about gratitude. To paraphrase he said that simple
 gratitude for existing is a wondrous thing. As artists
this is not a hard concept.  I asked my older son, who
is now a photographer if he see photos everywhere,
and he said yes.  We share that because of course
for an artist every way we look we see subject
matter.  Endlessly. So I let my critical mind take a
break, and went for a walk in the luminous, blue night. 
 Someone on Twitter called Deepak Chopra "The Deep,"
and I liked that because he is both deep and quietly
reassuring.  I came home to paint.

Have a watching-the-world's-magnificence day.