Study for Nine Mangos

Repetition and grouping are compositional strategies employed by artists ranging from the painters of the Lascaux Caves to Andy Warhol, with his portraits and soup cans. My inspiration for this painting of mangoes comes from the fruit sellers at the marketplace, who arrange their fruit attractively yet efficiently, without wasting space.

The space in this painting is shallow, pushing the objects forward toward the picture plane, which makes it look Modernistic. Yet it is far from flat—the undulations between the mangoes and the shadows they cast onto one another draw the viewer's attention back into the painting in a visually seductive way.