In collaboration with Happy Productions

• 18x24in
  Oil on Canvas

I buy a box of strawberries a week for my 8yr-old. It is his favorite fruit. Without it, his diet would suffer. Cheerios is his favorite cereal. I researched to find something to feed him that wasn’t chemical-laden and found… little choice. Abundant pictures of farmers in hazmat suits buzzing like a swarm of yellow jackets over green fields. A far contrast from the images of green happy farms on food packaging. 

I had planned this image prior to the pandemic; aiming to present the contrast between the small-farm lore of advertisements and the realities of industrial farming. But with the pandemic, it took on new meaning; the hazmat would no longer evoke hazardous chemicals, but the new invisible biological enemy and the new set of anxieties that it presented.

As the economics and politics of the pandemic progressed, the picture became relevant in new ways. The divide between producer and consumer, between the labor force exposed to the hazards of togetherness and the recipients trying to survive danger in the sometimes suffocating safety of their homes, these issues emerged in the public sphere. The faceless presence as we are minimally aware of the lives of those who bring food to our tables. I decided to accept and embrace the new meaning, integrate it with the initial intention, and so titled the picture with some degree of irony; a title that would bring so many layers of meaningful commentary to both contexts: “It is better to give than to receive.”