Here’s a great quote sent to me by a friend – it’s by Daniel Sutton who was an 18th century clinical scientist and innoculator. It could easily apply to still life paintings of everyday objects but in terms of research he wrote,
“Despise not trifles, though they small appear. Sands rise to mountains, moments make the year and trifles life. Your time to trifles give or you may die before you learn to live.”
A dozen rusty nails 23 x 44cm
Being involved with two exhibitions that will include still life paintings has made me think about why I’ve become immersed in them recently. In early paintings objects were used as coded messages and symbols. They conveyed something more than their everyday purpose. I started concentrating on individual objects when working as a project artist during the building of a Cathedral tower. I could see both the symbolic and the actual significance of the individual components in the general scheme of things. However small and unimportant they appeared, their inclusion was an essential part of the grander scheme.
My direct approach in looking straight at an object or repeated objects is almost a way of forcing attention towards these things. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was also influenced by the landscape painting that I have done of East Anglia, where you are constantly aware of the flat landscape, the horizon line, rows of trees etc. Everything is laid out in front of you and there is no avoiding what’s there. Our flat landscape is not considered beautiful or picturesque but I have always been captivated by it! I look at still life the same way – straight on, unavoidable, simple, strong, honest ……. captivating.
Humble objects are evocative – they show history, human endeavor and the visual beauty of aging and use. Still life will always be alive because there is ‘more to it than meets the eye’ – it is intimate yet worldly, simple yet powerful, quiet yet evocative.
Seven paint bladders 19 x 33cm
I’ve been drawing and painting some of the paint bladders that were found at Gainsborough House, Sudbury, in 1966 (the largest group ever found together). Made from pigs bladders, they were used to store paint before tubes were invented (c1840).
Why am I doing this? I’m exhibiting at Gainsborough House in an exhibition, ‘Contemporary East Anglian Artists’ (26 October – 14 December 2013). I thought that objects in the museum may excite my obsession with small, unassuming everyday objects (see Gallery/Still Life). I was shown lots of other things from the Gainsborough House collection but these really grabbed me. Their simplicity and history were evocative, both symbolically and aesthetically. There is a hidden grandeur in everyday things – although unassuming, they can play an important part in our everyday lives and the signs of age and use add beauty and character.
I often paint things in rows, both in still life and in landscape. I think it has something to do with the East Anglian landscape with its unavoidable flat horizons and rows of trees – it’s never an intentional use of repetition but it seems to keep appearing in things that I paint!
Gainsborough’s House doesn’t know very much about the paint bladders at the moment but are looking to work with the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge to discover much more about them.
