oil on mdf board, 8″ x 12″

Last weekend we picked our first two bushels of anaheim chiles from True Love Farm.  As I was roasting the green ones and making the ristra from the red ones, the aroma of fresh and roasting chiles filled the house.  Today when Stella came over for our weekly painting date, she suggested that instead of landscape painting we stay and paint the chiles!  It was one of the most loving paintings I have ever made, because these chiles are so important to my life here.  When  Jon first convinced me to move out here from Denver, I said the only way I would do it was if we could find a way to have our annual batch of chiles.  The farmers here said the growing season is too short, the air too humid, etc.  So, for 12 years my good and true friend Michele Kelley has been sending me four bushel of green and either a bushel of red to make the ristra— or a ristra already made of red—anaheims from the farms outside of Denver.  This is the first year I will not have to import the chiles.  We are buying local and the chiles are becoming part of the local landscape, thanks to Karen and Steven Trubitt of True Love Farm in Shaftsbury, VT.

Every year when the chiles come I get so involved with roasting and hanging them, that I don’t get to painting them (though I did put a few in a bowl for the graveyard sketches on Tuesday).  Thanks to Stella, this year I finally stopped and really painted them.  This might be my favorite little painting ever.