The Colors of Fruit
Elizabeth McNeil Harris
Curated by Gaby Mizes
Wednesday, March 27th through Saturday, April 20th, 2024
Drawings and musings on the beauty of familiar (and delicious) objects.
Three Pink and Yellow Apricots
2023
Chalk pastel on paper
11” x 14”
$400
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
Three Pink and Yellow Peaches
2024
Chalk pastel on paper
11” x 14”
$400
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
FROM BLOSSOMS
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
– Li-Young Lee
Two Plums
2024
Chalk pastel on paper
8” x 10”
$250
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
Three Yellow and Red Apricots
2023
Chalk pastel on paper
8” x 10”
$250
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
Blood Orange
Elizabeth McNeil Harris
2024
Chalk pastel on paper
8” x 10”
$400
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
THE ORANGE
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
– Wendy Cope
Two Red and Blue Cherries
2023
Chalk pastel on paper
11” x 14”
$400
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
FALL
The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,
Paradisal fruits that taste of no man's sweat.
Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;
When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.
– Wendell Berry
Three Black Cherries
2023
Chalk pastel on paper
11“ x 14”
$400
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
BLACK CHERRIES
Late in May as the light lengthens
toward summer the young goldfinches
flutter down through the day for the first time
to find themselves among fallen petals
cradling their day’s colors in the day’s shadows
of the garden beside the old house
after a cold spring with no rain
not a sound comes from the empty village
as I stand eating the black cherries
from the loaded branches above me
saying to myself Remember this
– W.S. Merwin
Three Green and Yellow Limes
2023
Chalk pastel on paper
8” x 10”
$250
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
Three Green Apples
2023
Chalk pastel on paper
8” x 10”
$250
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
ONTO A VAST PLAIN
You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.
The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.
Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.
The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.
Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Three Yellow and Red Lemons
2024
Chalk pastel on paper
11” x 14”
$400
Click image to enlarge ⦿ Inquire
A LEMON
Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium
Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.
Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.
So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.
– Pablo Neruda