Basket case
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS PARANOIA. YOUR WORST FEARS CAN COME TRUE AT ANY MOMENT.
- Hunter S. Thompson
Every aspiring artist practices with a still life painting. Fruits are a common choice for a subject in a still life. But what if the still life subject wasn't so still? What if the fruits were... alive?! The inspiration for this design came from the abundance of fruits that grow around the island. We chose our favorite and started with some sketches of certain fruits. The idea of putting eyes on the fruit just naturally came into fruition. No pun intended. You could say our experience of living on a farm reinvigorated our relationship with food. What was once merely something we chewed up and swallowed for sustenance, we now see our food as a living thing that we cannot take for granted.
This wall was situated in front of an open air shared kitchen space. It was typically the area where guests would have their breakfast and coffee. The location being an eating area was a big deciding factor on why we chose fruits as the subject.
The color palette was inspired by the sunsets we had the privilege of enjoying everyday in Kalapana. We incorporated some of the amazing pink and purple hues that flash across the sunset sky.
We thought that the quote combined with the image gave a comical view of what it would be like to be a paranoid piece of fruit wondering when its end was coming. The completion of this mural also took place around the time that the COVID-19 epidemic started to break out. When news came out about its severity and the regulations that were about to take place, everyone seemed to have their own conspiracy theory. Some actually seemed reasonable while others took a bit more mental gymnastics to wrap your head around the possibility. Either way, a lot of energy had been spent on going down the rabbit holes of all the what-ifs. We hoped that if someone got a chance to look at this mural, they could take a moment to reevaluate their own paranoia and realize that maybe it wasn't that serious at all.
