Still Life with...

Comment

Comment by Laurel Sternberg on November 6, 2011 at 3:24pm

Hi Michael, this has a really nice quality to it. Surreal somehow.

Comment by Resident Curator on November 2, 2011 at 1:14pm

Curator’s Comment:

 

This is a delightfully still, still life.  The limited palette highlights the discreet drama possible with small, measured shifts in color temperature.  The warm tonality of the planter in the foreground atmospherically advances, allowing the cooler objects to shift back ever so subtly.  I enjoy the warm gray neutrals of the ground, conjuring seventeenth century Dutch still lives, or Giorgio Morandi bottles.  The clustering of the three objects in the center space also creates a slightly unexpected, staid grouping.  The containers become faintly anthropomorphic as their close proximity in the empty space creates an underlying psychological presence.  The cast shadow of the bag further intimates a vulnerability of existing in open space.  I also really enjoy your Still Life with Green Bottle and Onion, for a similarly masterful handling of grays and whites. While the green bottle that shares the stage has skillful chiaroscuro and solidity of form, I don’t feel it has the fresh, virtuoso marks that seem so effortless in the onion and metallic container.  It is the inconspicuous elements that become the stars of your work.