Vegetable Stand 

Editor: Lee Gatch's "Vegetable Stand," done in watercolor, presents this marketplace scene in such a wonderfully muted palette. It almost feels dreamlike. What sort of images or ideas emerge for you when you look at it? Curator: This piece, for me, speaks volumes about memory and place. Think about the visual shorthand at play: Gatch isn’t depicting individual carrots or tomatoes. He's conjuring the essence of a vegetable stand, calling on our collective memory of such places. It’s about the feeling of abundance, of color, the geometric shapes acting like fragments of memory pieced together. How does the abstraction affect your own connection to the subject matter? Editor: I think the abstraction lets me focus on the colours and shapes more, it becomes less about the actual vegetables. Curator: Exactly. The choice of watercolor as a medium also adds layers of meaning. Its ephemeral quality subtly references the fleeting nature of these stands. They're temporary constructions, bursting with life, then quickly dismantled and gone. Editor: It makes me consider all the different shapes that the objects create as they are placed on the stand; it also made me realize the colours do seem so temporary and dreamlike. Curator: Consider the composition as a symbolic landscape too. The placement of forms, colours, evokes the feeling of human interaction without figures. We read the painting like a coded language representing this scene from everyday life, loaded with meanings both individual and collective. Editor: I didn’t consider the ephemeral side of the marketplace and how he has depicted this so well. It really broadens the narrative! Curator: Seeing these everyday scenes translated into near abstraction truly shows us the emotional weight of something simple like a farmer's market. It bridges the personal experience with a larger cultural memory.