This Sunday’s work of art is by a contemporary artist from Virginia who often paints wine, in fact so much so that her domain name is winepaintin.gs. Her name is Emily Zasada, and she’s also done a couple of paintings of beer, too. The painting below is a still life called Beer, Typewriter and Key

From her biography at her website:

Why realism?

I’m not sure. I’m not a patient person, so even I don’t always understand why I’ve chosen to focus on this type of art. But the details of objects fill our lives; they’re background players and constant companions, even though they’re largely unnoticed. Consider the faint curve of the keys of the computer keyboard under your fingers, for example, or the pale translucent light that lightly brushes the rim of your coffee cup. All of these tiny things give our life texture and beauty, if we stop just for a moment to examine them and pause in the middle of an enormously rushed day.

So I guess that transferring these details into a painted image pays homage to these details, carved out by light and scattered throughout our daily lives. Light is so important in my paintings that possibly it isn’t really realism that I’m after, but a glowing version in which the light that brushes over an object and carves shadows around and through it is itself an artist, changing the hues and shapes of objects as the hours pass in a day.

I’m self taught, and have been painting for nearly 5 years. An article about my work was featured in the spring 2005 edition of the Virginia Wine Gazette, and one of my paintings was also chosen for the cover art. One of my paintings was also featured on the cover of the Long Island Wine Gazette and another painting was featured as the cover of the program for the 2006 Virginia Wine Festival.

Despite her wine focus, I discovered at least one more beer painting she did, this one entitled Afternoon Pour.

You can see more Zasada’s artwork at a gallery at Art Wanted and, of course, at her main website.