"Les Tuiles aux Poires" glaze oil 16 x 16 Just now as I was washing the kitchen floor, I had to stop to peel a barcode off the floor. It doesn’t seem like so long ago when the little devils started to appear. The first one I encountered was on a pear; it seemed so comical and inappropriate that I assumed it to be an esoteric satire on supermarket mentality. Alas, I underestimated the banality of modern life and now our lives are littered with them. Whenever I try to detach them from the hapless fruit, the barcodes jump to a secondary host, clinging like death. There is one stuck to my favourite knife, another plastered to the counter, two in the tv room, and at least one has been worn to work by my beloved. While he proudly wears the gold star bestowed at the dentist’s office, I suspect the barcode was an accident. I too have sported a few in public.
This may seem trivial for those of you with decent nails. However, spare a tear for those of us who lack them. Or those who need reading glasses. I have to check both boxes. So these ubiquitous limpets conjure a sticky future - one filled at worst with mouthfuls of plastic or at the very least with inevitably tattered fruit. And in some indefinable way, these tiny aesthetic insults add up.
Which brings me to my question. This painting is of a detail from Rita and John’s magnificent pear tree. We have feasted on many a juicy delight from this tree. Should I, must I, now go back and paint tiny barcodes onto their charming rumps? (Yes, I know you know I am talking about the pears.) More troubling, might our own rumps be next? The barcode police are massing at the barricades…. It’s only a matter of time.
Oops, been watching too much American political theatre. Phew. What a relief to remember that we live in Canada.
This may seem trivial for those of you with decent nails. However, spare a tear for those of us who lack them. Or those who need reading glasses. I have to check both boxes. So these ubiquitous limpets conjure a sticky future - one filled at worst with mouthfuls of plastic or at the very least with inevitably tattered fruit. And in some indefinable way, these tiny aesthetic insults add up.
Which brings me to my question. This painting is of a detail from Rita and John’s magnificent pear tree. We have feasted on many a juicy delight from this tree. Should I, must I, now go back and paint tiny barcodes onto their charming rumps? (Yes, I know you know I am talking about the pears.) More troubling, might our own rumps be next? The barcode police are massing at the barricades…. It’s only a matter of time.
Oops, been watching too much American political theatre. Phew. What a relief to remember that we live in Canada.
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