APRIL FIGS by artist Andrea Bogdan

Acrylic on canvas, 9 x 12", in a hand tinted wood frame to 10 x 13" (1.5" deep)

Andrea wasn't sure how she was going to freestyle a tree into the painting and then it appeared! A little tree in the middle. In her first iteration of the tree, it had little tiny leaves, and no fruit, and she felt like these two people were working together to help the tree to grow and survive. She decided that maybe instead of two people trying to save a wimpy tree, they could be admiring a miraculous and wonderful tree, filled with plump, sweet fruit. A magical tree with lots of room to grow, still. So she turned it into a fig tree, with fluffy leaves and beautiful fruit in varying degrees of ripeness.

The reason it's called "April Figs" is because fig trees are not actually in season in April. They don't have any fruit yet. And so the story in the painting is about two people who believe so strongly that their tree could have figs in April, that the tree actually DOES grow figs... in April! It's kind of like when teachers believe their students are more capable, their students actually become more capable. 

So there you have it. A pretty painting about believing the impossible is possible. 

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Andrea Bogdan generously uses color and motion in her paintings to express the unique life spark inside every person, and the weird, wonderful and conflicted nature of the human condition. All of her works are improvised from beginning to end, painted primarily by “hand” (she prefers using acrylics and painting with the side of her palm), and no two pieces are alike. 

Andrea lives and works in Los Angeles and has been creating for Cactus Gallery since 2014.

Browse more of Andrea's work here: https://cactusgalleryla.com/collections/andrea-bogdan-at-cactus-gallery