Fran Beallor

Ugly Fruit

Misfits Market, Hungry Harvest and Imperfect Foods did not exist when I started this series of colored pencil drawings. Distressed by our culture’s terrible waste of “imperfectly” grown foods, I began to draw unconventional vegetables and fruit, nature’s oddly shaped surprises, shown in their natural glory, simply exquisite. Their character, their unusual forms, bumps and bruises, inform my ongoing series, which has included wild organic carrots that resemble ginseng, unruly squash, heirloom tomatoes of incredible colors and shapes, and humble, knobbly root vegetables such as beets, turnips, and potatoes - quite beautiful, though not by contemporary mass-market standards.