Donald Diddams
The Art of Digital Art
The Irresistible Egg Fruit
There was this pile of bright yellow-orange egg fruit on a red table at St. Croix’s St. George Village Botanical Garden last summer. The jumble of shapes lit with an intense swath of sunlight across the front was irresistible. So I took it home with me.
Occasionally I will go to work immediately on a photograph to produce a final image. However, just as common is the months-long gestation that this one required. Several times I worked on it, was dissatisfied and put it away — only to bring it out later, delete a layer or two (a little like scraping the paint off?) and move forward. That start and stop process sometimes produces an image that is over-worked. But in other cases, it is the only way.
Egg fruit - 2009
The painting-a-day discipline of carrying a painting forward to completion each day is different from the luxury of allowing an idea to gestate, going back days later, and reconsidering the strokes of the brush (or in my case, the stylus). Not better or worse, but different. So does that different process lead to different results?
Donald Diddams 
This one is so painterly and doesn’t have any hint of being gestation laden.
It’s got depth and a gauzy lightness that almost belies the essence of egg fruit, which is like hardened wallpaper paste that’s had a pound of sugar added to it.
I really like all the pink cast shadows on the fruits that recede.
You shoot and think like a fine painter.
It’s the process and the results that when in sync, you’ve scored and it feels like it.
Thanks so much Bonnie. Yes, process and results in sync is good…
As for egg fruit… Pasty and not irresistible at all, except to look at. However, I googled egg fruit and saw a recipe for some sort of egg fruit custard that looked like it might be good!