Would you paint a potato? Don’t worry, this isn’t some mad dadaist take on those old “You wouldn’t download a car” ads. America, apparently, has been gripped with potato-decorating fever, sparked first by memes about how expensive eggs are getting in the run-up to Easter, and then a concerted effort by Potatoes USA to get everyone’s favourite root vegetable briefly trending. It didn’t hurt that American egg prices have risen 55% in a year, while potatoes are up just 14%.
Meanwhile, with UK farmers threatening an egg shortage, I’ve been forced to reduce my own Gaston-like consumption levels to a mere two or three a day. And so, with my five-year-old voicing grave misgivings and absolutely no idea what kind of paint works on vegetables, I popped to the shops to grab a bag of Co-op’s third-finest.
First of all, let’s just acknowledge that this is obviously all ridiculous. I’m not Martin Lewis – or Heston Blumenthal – but even I know that you can still get all the benefits of eating an egg and still paint it by poking a hole in each end and blowing the runny bits out. It’s genuinely simple enough for an actual child to do, and you get a delicious omelette afterwards.
A potato, though? Listen, I’m sure that it’s possible to peel your artistic efforts off before you mash it, or even invest in edible paint, but both of those things defeat the whole purpose of the exercise – you don’t get to keep your ovoid objet d’art, and you don’t actually save any money. Winner: l’œuf.
But what about the painting itself? Well, after some cajoling of the boy – “The Easter bunny doesn’t like potatoes” – it all went pretty well. True, a potato offers a less uniform painting surface than an egg, but to the dedicated decorator, this can actually work in its favour. Rather than making every subject conform to an oblate spheroid, you can start your potato-painting journey by picking a spud that mimics the look you’re going for: pear-shaped for Winnie-the-Pooh, hard-edged for Daniel Craig.
And the fun doesn’t stop when you’ve selected your starchy canvas: if you’re creative, every whorl and divot represents an opportunity, rather than a challenge. Painting a potato, it turns out, has more in common with the art of the abstract expressionists than the precision an egg demands – it’s not better or worse, but rewards a different temperament.
That’s what my five-year-old said, anyway. Full disclosure, he’s a veteran, coming to this project fresh from a victory in his school’s Easter diorama competition with no more than a perfectly-acceptable amount of parental help from me. The subject was Mario from Super Mario Bros – he, very sensibly, decided to do a piranha plant and an actual Yoshi egg, I did the man himself – and so for our potato experiment, we decided to continue the theme. And … it sort of worked?
Even though he’s actually a mushroom, Toad’s top-heavy dimensions work pretty well in potato format, while Bowser’s lumpen, spiky frame translates perfectly to a tuber. Princess Peach was a bit more tricky – her signature look is all flowing lines and effortless elegance, which aren’t the words you first associate with a potato – but a steady hand and a couple of repaints got it done. As for technique, I actually think the novelty of potato-painting inspired my child to push the creative envelope – he did a fantastic job on Bowser’s eyes, and got the body almost spot on.
So am I permanently switching to potatoes? Well, no, obviously, that would be insane. I’d never be able to explain it to my relatives, and neither I nor my son want our artistic creations sprouting before the Easter bunny arrives. If the humble spud has anything to recommend it, it’s the novelty factor – for a brief moment in time, my son and I were both absolutely enraptured by the possibilities of this new medium, like impressionists messing about with printmaking or Chris Ofili dabbling in dung.
Next up, we’re going to try rocks, which come with the added bonus that you can leave your (everlasting) creations around for other people to happen across. Next year, maybe it’ll be something else again. Cabbages don’t last long, but I hear they’re pretty cheap.
