Family Vine

        I was an unripe tomato child. My mother and grandmother tended expansive gardens every spring to fall, and my summer childhood memories are of them outside picking and prodding. Summer memories of myself are inside alone, playing on my tablet, hiding in my room, hoping they would forget about their oldest daughter and granddaughter while they worked. 

        I felt nothing like the women in my family. Everything they loved, I feared, and the outside, the garden, was feared the most. Hot June afternoons, collaborating amongst crawly bugs and soil that snuck underneath nails sounded miserable. The worst part about gardening to me was having to eat the vegetables as a picky child who despised anything unprocessed and unpackaged. My mother always produced a hearty range of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. Tomatoes were her favorite, and an entire section of the garden was dedicated to multiple varieties of them annually. Stuck between two categories of food, tomatoes are neither a vegetable nor a fruit. They were my least favorite. I was the tomato of my family garden. Not quite the same as the other women in my family, disconnected from the integral facets of them. Clockwork isolation came every late May as I holed up in my room resenting their attempts to bring me into their interests. My perspective on my family has ripened over the past handful of years living away from home and returning in the summers. My views on dirt and bugs stuck, yet my opinions on tomatoes and being around my family have grown. 

        Their love of gardening is about spending time together, building something to be enjoyed. Our time in one place is numbered in ways it wasn't when I was a kid, and I've come to love being outside with them, even if I still do not enjoy insects or getting dirty. I’ve grown from green and sour to a ripened vermillion. I love to try new foods, and tomatoes are my favorite add-on. 

        My artwork, Family Vine, is a watercolor inspired by these plantings and familial connections shifting as I have grown up. The 10x10 illustration was an experiment with elements of abstraction and a medium unfamiliar to my artistic comfort zone. Similarly, with new foods, I branch out and try them. A similar effort to seek new techniques or subjects in artwork is made. I chose to abstract the edges of the piece to connect it better to my sense of nostalgia. Memories with fuzzy details caused by time are represented through blurred edges on the paper manipulated by watercolor paints. A warm red, yellow, and green palette was chosen for the summer-oriented story behind the piece, but also to subtly tell the story of my growth in a tomato metaphor. The fruits start vivid green at the bottom before evolving into whispers of yellow and orange. Then, blossoming into a juicy vermillion red. Family Vine is an artwork and a love letter to the women in my family, their love of gardening, and our love of each other.