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Side by side harvesting provokes creativity and digital painting

Two Pick - digital painting / art prints - Dan Beck 2006

If you have been following any of the recent postings, it should be obvious that the daily harvesting of strawberries all around me is greatly affecting my current art prints.

This piece came from a drive by around the bend from my house. Two women were bent picking berries side by side in the same row, practically in unison sporting different colored same color clothing and baseball hat.

These were not the colors, nor did I catch exactly what I had intended. But nevertheless the resulting digital painting is worth sharing - as it does capture enough of what I was describing.

My additional hope is that their energy and focus and what is really a beautiful scene in the midst of hard labor comes through clearly.

For art prints of above digital painting - please write specialorders@outhousestudios.net.

See Also

• Figures Art Gallery
  where most of the similar work can be found
• Strawberry Growth Stage Reference
  Interesting pictorial look at growth stages of strawberries
• Japanese-American relocation / Croplands / Strawberries / Harvesting / Evacuations / Hills - Gallery of the Open Frontier
  Liked the photo a lot - looks like an interesting though not particularly related site

conveying scene, witness, labor, humanity and meaning

Strawberry Fields -digital painting / art prints -Dan Beck 2005

I started working on a new art piece - not above - but related. Witnessing the daily harvest of strawberries is actually fairly new to me.

Many of the fields around me were converted last season. The above digital painting is from the previous year but is about trying to convey this incredible scene.

The field workers are always in what look like uncomfortable positions - kneeling, curved backs, stretched out - but I am generally not as close as the portrayal above.

As a witness, it is my goal to both share the awkwardness, the humanity, the dignity and perhaps the dismay - at those people who think that migrant labor is a job that people born in America would actually be willing to do.

I just came back from a trip to New York, and the truth is - it is almost impossible to get summer help from American youth any more.

This is not a political blog, but imagine a world without strawberries.

See Also

• Strawberry Fields
  Options and availability of art prints
• Watsonville Berry Co-op: California Strawberries
  Photos of strawberry harvest - a number thoughout site
• UC Vegetable Research & Information Center
  Images of agriculture from San Joaquin Valley - an education