Kitchen Chaekgeori

This is the newest painting in my Chaekgeori-inspired series.   The books are some of the cookbooks on shelves in my small, San Francisco kitchen.  On the lowest shelf are essential coffee beans and tea bags stored in old spaghetti sauce jars (reuse and recycle), plus filters, mugs, etc.   

From the beginning, I recognized each Chaekgeori I was painting is in essence a portrait — or in this example a self-portrait.  These shelves also include art I have collected and art I have made.  There is even a shadow box I made for my grandmother as a child.  It sat on her kitchen shelf for decades.   There are souvenirs from trips going back over 40 years — to Sweden and more recently Mexico.  Some of the mugs are souvenirs as well.  On the top shelf there are some vintage ice crushers and other kitchen tools — something else I have been collecting for a long time. 
The stuff on those shelves reveals quite a lot about me.