How Picking Cherries Can Improve Your Art

I just returned from teaching at an art retreat in Italy and I was happy to see that I had not missed the cherry harvest from my backyard tree. It is a small tart cherry tree that doesn’t produce very large fruit and the birds usually get most of them. This year due to some much-needed rains in our arid mountain climate, there was an abundance of cherries. There had been a gentle rain the night before and when I went to pick the cherries in the morning, they were still moist with rain. As I poked my head through the branches and reached for the fruit I was transported back in time to a specific day and place. It was like time-traveling, I was there in that moment.

I was riding in the back of a pick-up truck along with several migrant workers on a crisp September morning. I could feel the coming of fall, smell the fruit ripening on the trees, hear the water in the irrigation ditches and feel the breeze and sun on my face. I was 18 and working in the fields picking fruit in Western Colorado. Not your usual gap year, but it was an experience that has influenced my life ever since. On this day, I told myself to take it all in. To embrace the experience with all my senses. This is how to experience life. When I put all my awareness into pulling everything into my being, I was embedding the moment forever in my consciousness, down to all the details. More memories of that year stay with me, but when I put a conscious effort into embracing the moment, I was able to stop time and create a living memory that I could return to at any time.

This is how to create better art. Put your entire awareness into the moment. If you are out plein air painting, take time to sense everything before you begin. Grasp all the details. Don’t rush it. You will capture this in your painting and you, and your viewers will notice the difference. The art will invoke the sense of place.

If you are an abstract painter in your studio, clear your mind, turn off any distractions, even music, and take a few minutes to imagine your painting. Recall a moment in your life that you would love to recreate. What feeling shall you paint? What colors do you want to use? What is your surface going to be and the size? Now look at your materials and really think about what each one does. How can they express this experience? I just finished painting a piece using lots of cracked earth pigments and metallic patinas. I was recreating a day when I discovered an amazing art installation park off the side of the road in a small mountain town. The day is fresh in my mind because of the unexpected happy surprise that I felt when I took a chance to discover what was at the end of a road. This is what I call my let’s just take a look adventure. Pure joy.

Take a day to embrace your surroundings. Really be in the present moment and let the memory become a favorite place for you to return to again and again.