Abbott Meader, Pumpkin on the Garden Wall, oil pastel on 100% rag paper, 25 x 32 in., 2004.
Gardens are human artifacts. Shakespeare’s Prince Hamlet, filled with frustration and rage at life’s injustices, cried out that the world had come to seem like “an unweeded garden that grows to seed,” where “things rank and gross in nature possess it merely.” Indeed, those who grow gardens are involved in making deliberate choices as to what will flourish and what will be forcefully curtailed from doing so. Human beings create and maintain gardens, yet nature’s magnificent and evolving structures of plant life rarely conform to what we call a garden. Gardens exist through constant human effort and oversight. In this painting, our initial attention is focused on a harvested pumpkin, severed from its source in the soil. Now it waits patiently, perhaps hoping to someday become a pie, while all around it, we glimpse images of relatives and friends. It is a bit crowded but comfortable. And as for the pumpkin seen here, I’ll just say: “Let’s face reality. You’re a picture. And that’s not a bad thing to be.”