In Three Vendors I have attempted to capture visual smorgasbord of the diverse people who sell goods each week at the market, their wares, and the people who buy them.

Colorful, distinctively ethnic, and often creatively mismatched clothing stand out, and I have made reference to some of the items you might see, such as a babushka (central figure). Much of their clothing is as symbolic and distinctive as traditional ceremonial garments, recalling a group characterized by it’s own culture.

The figures preside over equally vivid images of natural bounty, fruits, vegetables and flowers.

To me, the vendors themselves exist as the purveyors of a natural bounty whose origins grow increasingly dim to us. The planting and tending and harvesting that occur in farms we speed past on expressways, or flyover, or live in our minds only as names on a labels, seem almost anonymous and unknowable labors; the fruits of which are reduced to floor to ceiling shelves of cans, tins, bottles, jars, boxes and cartons.

Consequently, the abundance of the natural world comes to life in the presence of these extraordinary souls; our market vendors.

Symbolic coloring is used in the dark blues represent the shadowy recesses from which they seem to emerge in the market sheds (and into which they will retreat) in space (back to isolated or remote farms) and in time (vanished from our sight everyday but market day).

From the shadows juts a table upon which vendors display their goods. It is a clean line of demarcation, serving as the bridge between our world and theirs, as well as an invitation to participate, to make their acquaintance, view their wares, to inspect, haggle, deal,
take something home with you.