The Conundrum of the Cake by Galina Dargery, 2015, oil & mixed-media

As a female artist and also the author of a cookbook, I am more concerned than ever that food science, in its attempts to increase production and decrease the cost of food, has put a distance between the food industry and the home cook at a time when there is so much information about what is bad or unhealthy, including GMO foods, chemical additives, and molecular gastronomy.

In my artwork, I strive to show how what was once a very natural, loving endeavor by women to cook for friends and family, has now become a roulette wheel of countervailing tastes, techniques, and proscriptions. My painting, The Cunundrum of the Cake, depicts how something as delicious as a fruit layer cake has come to have so many social strings attached to it, that this creative baking process is now a "heavy" decision.

Website: http://galinadargery.com