Artist’s Statement, Emerging Artist Exihibit, Provincetown Art Association Museum, July, 2000

The Apple Series

Two years ago I bought my own house and barn studio, moving back from the city to live year-round in Truro. Each day I watch the ancient fruit trees in my yard mark the passing of time, connecting me to the seasons and my own version of paradise in a way I had not been connected before.

Apples, of which there are more than ten thousand varieties, are a common fruit - at once simple, useful, beautiful. But it is the power which the apple holds across the millennia that has held my focus. Greeks, Romans, Persians and Celts drew upon the apple’s magical and mysterious powers, the fruit boasts an ancient entanglement with paradise, and, as a universal symbol of fertility and knowledge, the apple has no equal as a treasure of the orchard.

Tom Watson