Life is funny.
Several years ago, just before leaving for an extended stay in Paris I received an email from a British ex-pat in Paris inquiring whether I was in fact the Lilianne Milgrom who painted a painting of three stout women holding onto each other as they waded into the ocean. Yes, I had indeed painted that whimsical painting in Israel many years earlier.
The inquiry was from food guru Fiona Reed who discovered the painting in a vintage store and bought it on the spot. To make a long story short, we met up when I got to Paris and with our common interest in art and food we soon became fast friends.
We played around with the idea of a collaborative project involving French recipes (Fiona) and illustrations (moi). Here is my initial sketch for the cover of the cookbook, B is for Baguette © :
Fiona and I never did complete our project together, but she fell in love with Baguette Boy and commissioned a large painting with a variation:
I thoroughly enjoyed painting the larger version with tons of texture and loose brushwork, and adding some rough gold leaf to the letter ‘B’.
Baguette Boy has now become a permanent fixture in Fiona’s kitchen, overseeing her recipe testing. She recently sent me this photo of one of her guests, Roberto Poma, taking his cue from Baguette Boy –
Maybe I’ll even get to finish that cookbook project one of these days…
Art and Beyond 