230. Raspberry ice cream with Violet petal (Himbeereis mit Veilchenblüte)

230. Raspberry ice cream with Violet petal (Himbeereis mit Veilchenblüte), 2025, Öl auf Leinwand, 20 × 15cm, (Darryn Ansted)

Painting is so full of contradictions, but isn’t that exactly what makes it so human… It always seems to be indeed like a waterfall, coming and going at the same time. It is leading me more than I am leading it. I know that mannerism is in fashion at the moment. There are millions of mannerisms but that waterfall is the tumult and spray that allows painting to give me a jolt.

Situations, situations. Doing a project about the situations that you experience in middle age, it is perhaps little surprise that I paint myself, my wife, our kids and something related to the need for a healthier lifestyle… Or perhaps the farewell to a lifestyle of reckless abandon. The thought of ice cream as a subject had been in the back of my mind for around a year but when I got news of high cholesterol the subject quietly moved to the front of my mind. No more ice cream for me.

Anyhow, as if on cue, after writing yesterday that I am not doing botanical illustration, I find myself painting a flower petal, looking up the Latin name of the flower and so on. No, it’s very far away from botanical illustration. I am too rough. Too much in the waterfall. Where else would you rather be?