Astral Bodies: The Meringue Test Trials of 1994 – 24″ x 24″ oil on panel (2023) – SOLD
This painting is about my mother. She died at the end of August 2023, the formal end of an estrangement that had lasted over a decade. One of the few good memories I have of my mother was about lemon meringue pie.
My mother embarked on a mission in the summer and fall of 1994: to build the perfect meringue. The struggle to create a meringue top of supreme (unbearable) lightness (of being), a cloud of fluffy decadence that did not shrivel or shrink in the furnace of creation that was our General Electric oven. Week after week her meringue failed to deliver on the package’s pictured promise, the electric yellow Shiriff lemon curd mix eclipsing her egg white peaks: a shrunken island of frustration floating in an artificially bright lemon sea. Week after week we happily ate her failures, assuring her of their delicious imperfection; but she would not be satisfied until she achieved the glory of tall, caramelized peaks that encompassed the lemon curd from edge to edge. A feat she finally achieved that fall. I admired her persistence in the face of failure – the drive to keep getting up and trying again, and again, and again.
I have painted what my mother would have considered Peak Performance Meringue, and whenever I have a slice of lemon meringue pie, the acidic tart mixing with airy sweet, my mind goes back to my mother’s kitchen in 1994; smelling of artificial lemon, sugar, and struggle.