Lavender Parfait ........ Perfect!

Hip hip hooray ....... got it finished, a dessert of a painting, lavender parfait! 

Lavender Parfait 

Having struggled with titles for quite some time, this one wasn’t a problem. I'm a bit of a foodie, or at least I was, this painting reminded me of a yummy dessert I had a while back. Why? Well, here in Europe parfait (meaning perfect) is a semi-frozen, ice-creamy type of dessert and my painting is of a half frozen, late afternoon with a creamy coloured sky. My dessert was a similar colour, soft and gently flavoured with lavender and decorated with two lavender stalks, the blossoms just the colour of that icy snow beneath the trees. Hmmmm, I can taste it on my tongue (and see the curves on my tummy that it contributed to!) even now.

In German food culture dessert really doesn’t play a big part, normally people don’t really do the three course thing in restaurants, instead they eat humongous main courses, with portions of meat that would feed a T Rex. Things (before lockdown) had been changing and everything is turning Vegan, I noticed that even my bottle of tonic proudly boasts a ''vegan'' label. 

Never a big meat eater myself, my first year here was a shock, I couldn’t believe the size of the meat portions and the idea of eating salami for breakfast was unusual to say the least. 33 years on, I'm still not a big meat eater, and I'm all for thinking about alternatives and the treatment of animals. Unfortunately, I love cheese so becoming Vegan is not for me, I can’t imagine a life without tomatoes and Mozzarella or cheddar or Stilton. 

Going out on a limb here but have you ever taken a peek at the labels on Vegan meat alternatives? One of the major producers in Germany is in a town pretty near here, if you read the list of ingredients on their ''meat from vegetables'', you maybe in for a surprise. Not sure if these highly processed, industrial products are really a) healthy or b) good for the environment, but horses for courses they are making a huge profit for the firms involved. 

May be I need to slap a ''vegan'' label on my art, apparently people are willing to pay 180% more for vegan options, unfortunately I'm not sure how vegan my art supplies are; an interesting thought? I wonder that the art supply world hasn’t  jumped on the bandwagon and would a vegan artist stop painting if they discovered there weren’t alternatives?