More than Honey

I read a quote by Albert Einstein - “if the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”

I was in Paris, scrolling through Pinterest and this quote had a profound effect on me. It seemed bold and unlikely to be true, but because Einstein had said it I believed it to have some value, so I started researching the importance of bees. Honeybees pollinate majority of the fruits and vegetables people eat daily, making their role as pollinators extremely important and relevant to our everyday lives. I had no clue at the time that an onion grows because of the symbiotic dance that takes place between its flower and these small pollinators.

I learned so much about our connection to the honeybee that day that as I lied down to bed thinking of how strawberries, one of my favorite fruits to indulge in, is made possible by the honeybee, who’s sweet honey I eat with almost everything, I had a deep needing to give them another voice through art.

Somewhere in-between being awake and asleep, the stark image of strawberries dripping in honey was envisioned and from that moment I felt I had to paint it.

The year of 2014, I had just moved to Portland, OR with my best friend to finish my undergrad degree in Fine Arts at Portland State University. I started this series outside of school, first by making a list of fruits and vegetables I eat almost daily that are pollinated by honeybees. I bought the produce and lots of honey and had a photoshoot of each one separately hanging as honey dripped down over each produce.

The first one I started painting was the strawberries and to be honest, I had to stop after putting the first layer down because it was intimidatingly too exact to what I had envisioned 6 months prior in Paris as I was falling asleep, which rarely happens as an artist. I stopped for about 3 months mostly because school work had picked up and couldn’t find the time. When I got back into painting it, I couldn’t stop and only could paint when It felt right. When I completed it, the moment sparked something inside that fueled a determination to make this series come into life just as the vision had come to me.

Eventually I started painting the series in class and was able to weave it into my Senior Thesis as I completed my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Portland State University. In other classes I incorporated it through research in environmental impacts and food and population classes, creating a backbone of knowledge to support my message and voice for sharing the importance of honeybees. It became something I was doing for the bees, for people to become more aware of our connection to our food and more to the environment from which they come.

In a way, these are self portraits or mirrors to those looking at them. We all have our own dialogue with art that presents itself before us. We bring our own ideals and beliefs, our own life experience up to this very present moment, and I think we can all see ourselves in these paintings in some shape or form, if not relate directly to the imagery itself, through our connection to food.

So these paintings have evolved to be about more than just honey. and in a way the work has manifested itself, as though channeled through me, for the bees to have another voice for us to become awake to our innate connection with this land we have come alive from to thrive with.

This series is in fact still in production as I am currently working on completing 2 more to join the group. The number of painting I could do is enormous considering the amount of produce. honeybees pollinate, so this series could truly continue on. I hope you stay tune as I continue this series.

Love,

Sophia Foster