Earthly Delights – Lost In The Garden

Earthly Delights – Lost In The Garden

Earthly Delights, Events & Announcements, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
Tempting Fruit (After Bosch) - 9"x12" O/C For the past few months I have been devouring a mountain of books and furiously planning, scheduling and scribbling in preparation for this day! June 1st marks the start of a pretty major new studio undertaking: Over the next 6 months I will be creating a large scale triptych oil painting inspired by Hieronymous Bosch's masterpiece, The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1500) For this project I will be expanding upon my still life food paintings, by incorporating them into an encyclopedic larger than life triptych referencing the moralizing religious art of the Northern Renaissance. The inspiration for this painting follows from my own experience navigating contemporary health and diet culture: I lost over 35% of my body weight to achieve a normal range…
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Earthly Delights: Background

Earthly Delights, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
Enchantment - 11" x 14" o/c - $825 CAD I'm writing this post today to share the origins of the Earthly Delights series of paintings. My intent was to share a statement about each of the paintings in the series in the coming months, however I was loathe to repeat this background with every post. It might also get a little repetitive for you the reader if you are following along reading the statements for each of the pieces. So this post is mainly here so I can link back to it in successive posts. The inspiration for the Earthly Delight series follows from my own experience navigating contemporary health and diet culture: I lost over 35% of my body weight to achieve a normal range BMI, then maintained that…
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Moments & Lifetimes – March 15 – May 4 2023

Moments & Lifetimes – March 15 – May 4 2023

Events & Announcements
#120, 501 Festival Avenue, Sherwood Park, AB 21 of my dessert paintings are on view now in the Foyer Gallery at gallery@501 in Sherwood Park Alberta. It is the largest show of my smallest paintings that I have sent to the Edmonton area so far. So if you are in the Edmonton area and have been curious to see my work in person, this is the time to do it! Artist Statement Want a taste test? Enjoy these images of the show! The inspiration was really about these glass fronted cabinets that constitute the Foyer Gallery. I had for a while thought that it would be interesting to show the paintings in a glass front display like a bakery window, so when I saw the call for submissions for the…
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Earthly Delights: Works in Progress

Earthly Delights: Works in Progress

Earthly Delights, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
I'm writing this at about the halfway point of the project as funded by Calgary Arts Development's individual artist project grant program. Earthly Delights - 10 Paintings of Food in Places, has close to half of the paintings nearing completion now, and I have begun assembling the reference material for the next three paintings in the project. By the time you read this blog post I anticipate the first four paintings will be complete, the next three will be well into development and I will be assembling reference material for the final 3 paintings in the project. So by way of a progress report I will share process images of the first four paintings along with a few production notes on each of them. In later individual posts I will…
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New Painting: Enchantment

New Painting: Enchantment

Earthly Delights, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
Enchantment 11 x 14 O/C $750 CADDebbie.lee Miszaniec, 2022 So Enchantment came about after I painted Tempting Fruit earlier this year. I loved the way that the chocolate cupcake in that painting just seemed like an over the top amalgam of all the wiley ways it could look like a tempting treat. Tempting Fruit, 9"x12" O/C - $595 CADDebbie.lee Miszaniec 2022 That painting made me think of other romantic gardens. So of course it was a short step from Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights to Fragonard's french rococo garden in The Swing. Prior to painting Enchantment I baked and frosted several cupcakes, really going for an over the top frothy look for the cupcake like the heroine in Fragonard's The Swing. From there I painted Cupcake Digest, to study the…
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New Painting: Thought & Feeling

New Painting: Thought & Feeling

Earthly Delights, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
Thought & Feeling, 12"x12" O/C, $750 CAD unframed Our pear is back in Thought & Feeling, torn between Sisyphus and Dionysus again. Early on with this painting I wanted to shift the deep red tone I had started with to a lighter warm pink, creating a feeling of nostalgia in the painting. I saw it as sort of a companion to the longing in the earlier painting I posted about, I Only See You. that painting was about unfulfilled longing, whereas Thought & Feeling is about the power of fond recollections over the intent to follow a reasoned course of action or desire for changes.
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New Painting: Idealized Figures

New Painting: Idealized Figures

Earthly Delights, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
Idealized Figures, 8"x10" O/C, $450 Unframed Meet Idealized Figures, one of the newest paintings in my series exploring the relationship between a little pink pear and a cake plate of jelly doughnuts. I was working on correcting and straightening some of the lines in the painting, when it occurred to me that this is what we do in life too; with our diet practices we attempt to correct nature and idealize our own forms. With this insight I decided to emphasize my correction lines in the painting.
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New painting: Set In Stone

Earthly Delights, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
Set In Stone, 24" x 18", O/C, CAN$ 1600 Finally completed after 3 months on the easel, give a warm welcome to Set In Stone. As part of my Cravings series exploring food obsession, Set in Stone features returning characters Pink Pear and the Jelly Doughnuts. While I Only See You focused on the exclusive relationship between Pink Pear and Jelly Doughnut, this painting also features an art history guest appearance by the OG stone cold mama of the paleo world, the Venus of Willendorf, reigning atop her divan of doughnuts. Containing Desire, 10" x 8" O/C CAN$ 495 framed Following on Containing Desire (above), which addressed the futility of trying to contain the seductive influence of our favourite foods, I introduced the idea of the deep biological or evolutionary basis for…
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New Painting: I Only See You

Earthly Delights, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
I Only See You, 9" x 12", O/C, CAN$550 I recently finished I Only See You, a new oil painting in my Cravings series of still life paintings exploring food obsession. I Only See You focuses on the exclusionary relationship between Pink Pear and Jelly Doughnut as Sisyphus' warnings of the doomed nature of the task fade into the background. My inspiration for keeping the composition relatively spare in this painting came, as per Tempting Fruit, from the background colour of Terre Vert and white that I initially laid down. I loved the way colour gave an empty pining feel to the composition, so I chose to emphasize that. I loved working with this soft complementary colour scheme so much, I think I will be using that again at some…
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New Painting: Tempting Fruit

Earthly Delights, The Story Behind the Painting, What's the Big Idea?
Tempting Fruit, 9" x 12" O/C, CAN$ 550 I recently finished Tempting Fruit, a fresh new oil painting in my Cravings series exploring food obsession. It features returning characters Pink Pear and the Jelly Doughnuts, as well as an art history guest appearance by a couple (or pair) from the right hand side of the central panel of Bosch’s masterpiece The Garden of Earthly Delights (c.1515) (below). By <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Hieronymus_Bosch" class="extiw" title="w:en:Hieronymus Bosch"><span title="Dutch painter (c.1450-1516)">Hieronymus Bosch</span></a> - <a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://boschproject.org/dzi/00MCPVIS.dzi">http://boschproject.org/dzi/00MCPVIS.dzi</a> (downloaded with <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://lovasoa.github.io/dezoomify-rs/">dezoomify-rs</a>), Public Domain, Link The inspiration for bringing Bosch into the picture began with the viridian green background in the early stages of the painting, along with the way the towel seemed to be leading the pear into the temptation of engaging…
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