Guavas

Painted 'em, then ate 'em.


(The photo is a bit glare-y and doesn't show the vibrancy of the orange accents.)

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

$115.00 - Guavas (Ready to Frame)

Pair of pears

This is last night's painting, which I will also leave for my hosts here.  

I had purchased these pears at the Wednesday-afternoon tianguis (open-air market) here in Ajijic, Mexico, and brought them home to the housesit we're at. I washed them and gave them an iodine disinfectant soak, then found a gorgeous pumpkin-orange dishtowel and laid them on it to dry. As soon as I placed them on the towel, I knew I had my still life.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Ripe and not so ripe

These are actually both local oranges, but one was a lot more ripe-looking (i.e., orange) than the other. This is yesterday's painting, which I will be leaving for our housesit hosts.

More art on my website: jalapfaff.com

Tequila

Today was not an art day, but it was pretty interesting. We took a bus tour to the town of Tequila, here in Mexico near Guadalajara. We visited two tequila factories: the newest, Tres Mujeres, which is concentrating on organic 100%-agave tequila; and José Cuervo, which everyone has heard of, which is the oldest and largest factory. I don't like alcohol much, so the tasting sessions were rather wasted on me (so to speak), but a lot of other people loved that aspect of the tour! I did participate in most of the tastings (miniscule amounts) but really, even the smallest taste just makes me grimace violently and flap and wave my hands about.

We did eat some agave "meat" raw. It looks a lot like tough coconut meat but has almost no flavor at all. We also tasted agave after it had been in the steaming oven for a few days--that's the first thing done to it on the way to turning it into tequila. At that point (having been in a massive, deadly-hot sauna for a few days), it was kind of sweet and oily and a brownish color, and tasted a bit like a potent, fibrous yam.

The guy sniffing the vat in the pic and standing up against the wall is The Husband. Tell me, doesn't he look cute in the hairnet we all had to wear (verrrrrry attractive it made all of us, I tell you)?  I can't decide if he looks more like a rapper or like he's waiting to be attended to at a hair salon.