STILL LIFE
“Within my definition of “Still-Life” is the quality of stabilizing that which is ever moving, vanishing and becoming my past.”
I painted my first still-life in 1990, twenty-five years into my career, setting up simple domestic objects on my kitchen table. From the start, I chose a minimalist, yet visually sensual approach and have stayed with it ever since. And during the last 30 years, I’ve made a concerted effort to develop still-life into a major subject area for my work.
I have come to understand the potential of ordinary objects; the enigmatic qualities of existence contained in the mundane. This is what Cezanne and Morandi had grappled with; what brings such an air of dignity to their simple subjects and the largeness we feel in them.
The tradition of still-life is almost as old as the art of painting itself. The factors that artists manage in working within its precepts are the fundamental elements of painting; shape, texture, color, design, spatial reference, and the sensuality of surface. The object observed and closely scrutinized in the clarity of daylight becomes one of the painter’s attachments with the real world.
It will always be considered a traditional approach to making art, but it can take place in respect of modernity. It does not have to be in opposition to it. Tradition can be valued and retained while still speaking to our time, our current experience. I believe the art of still-life is as viable as ever. It affords the artist a compelling balance between geometry and the illusion of representational painting and offers an endless world of possibilities for distilling a contemplative order from the noisy chaos of the world.
And so, the objects are chosen and arranged, illuminated by the light of the studio window. The drawing is made, the colors gradually applied, tonalities adjusted toward warmth or coolness, details articulated, many seen only after extended observation. Days go by, weeks sometimes before it is done. In that time, it has become both an illusion and an actual thing, an object – both a recollection and an experience in the present.