What Is It about Tomatoes?

Tomato for Neruda, 2023.

 At this time of the year, I am happily overwhelmed by tomatoes.  There are tomatoes to be picked in my garden and the Pine Plains Community Garden.  Wonderful heirlooms are purchased from local farmers like Marian and Mark at Full Circus Farm and Julie and the other wonderful women at Silomar Farm.  So many tomatoes sit in wait for me to slice and put into a tomato sandwich or dinner salad, roast, turn into a wonderful sauce for pasta, chop into a tomato pie, puree for gazpacho, or PAINT.  And yes, although I love to eat tomatoes in any form, no eating compares to the joy of painting a tomato.  

     The image above is of this year’s chosen tomato.  On its own, the tomato model inspires; but it received a special boost from a poem. This poem:

Ode to Tomatoes
by
Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

  When I first read this poem, I was struck by all the imagery — all the details of life that surround the tomato:  countertops, glasses, butter dishes, saltcellars (blue), the knife, oil, parsley, etc.  I immediately began to compose a very complicated still life that would include the tomato amongst all these other beautiful household objects.  But then, I reread the poem and thought no, all I need is the tomato on the canvas.  Neruda makes that clear in the closing lines of the poem.

the tomato offers

its gift

of fiery color

and cool completeness.

     That is all I tried to capture in this summer’s painting.