Beneath the Palms - The Sparkling Croissant by Tom Everhart

16" x 20.5" Unframed
Limited Edition Print of 195
Hand Signed by Tom Everhart

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For over 23 years, French Polynesia has been our second home/studio. It was purely by design, as we decided this within the first hour of the first day we arrived in 2000. It immediately felt like a new and unique universe that had many of the same features as the other, but completely different. For example, the same Pacific Ocean, but crystal clear for miles and miles, appearing fresh, like you could drink it. The same

big blue open skies with white flowing clouds. Although, these clouds form many more vertical shapes than the usual horizontal forms due to their proximate location to the equator. More astonishing, no pollution. Of course, there are fish, but in Tahiti, there are individual fish that wait for us just off of our porch for a water walk together.  Even my own eating habits, of no buttery, sugary foods (considerate of my cancer history), are completely unfamiliar as every morning I consume many irresistible freshly made French Polynesian croissants. 

 Charles Schulz had said to me many times, “the artist succeeds if he or she can present something familiar from an unfamiliar angle.” So, when in this other universe of French Polynesia, I have always felt like I was participating in some amazing art form.                      

In these 23 years, every trip to Tahiti has always felt as if

somewhere in the eight hours, across the ocean in the middle of the dark night, we had gone through some kind of hole in the sky into another universe, high above the clouds, lit by the moonlight. Humorously, due to our Tahitian croissant overindulgence, I have fancifully referred to this event as the “flying croissant.”                                                       

Although these delicious croissants became a very suitable metaphor for this other universe, their overindulgence also comes with a very lethargic after effect, usually “Beneath the Palms.” In this suite, consisting of four new prints, titled, “Beneath The Palms”, the croissant is once again used as a metaphor for several of the addicting, thriving characteristics of this other “flying croissant” universe. 

“The Sparkling Croissant”  In 1929, Henri Matisse, decided to take a two month trip to Tahiti looking for new ideas at a moment in his life when the artist was feeling old and uninspired (he was 60). He would later, in 1935, create a painting, titled, “Window In Tahiti, and wrote that Tahiti was “too bright,” and that he only found “lethargy” there. Well, I would agree that Tahiti is very bright, as the sparkling lagoons look as if they were a mirror covered in small diamonds. But, it is that intense brightness that allows one with fresh eyes to see even deeper into the gaps between what we all see and offers a way of seeing even more. Also, after finishing an entire large plate of French Polynesian croissants, a state of sleepiness is quite natural and truly rewarded by lying in a beach chair “beneath the palms.”