9 December 2020
For about 6 years I have been painting, amongst other things, long still life paintings. Each time I think ‘enough of this’ another one pops into my head. It all started with a present for my niece who wanted a painting to go in a particular place where only ‘long and thin’ would do. She is very sporty so it became ‘Six balls and a shuttlecock’.
So I’ve tried to think what made me want to continue with this format. Often it’s only in retrospect that these things seem to come to you. Even before the painting above, I had seemed to veer towards ‘a line’ and have written about it in previous blogs. I live in East Anglia where the land is, more often than not, flat with a visible clear horizon. The majority of my landscapes emphasised this including some of the first paintings that I showed at the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI).
Something being laid out in front of you, straight on, seemed to force you to inspect it – almost like a specimen with everything laid bare. Another influence could have been my time as Project Artist during the building of the St Edmundsbury Cathedral Millennium Tower, where I studied all the various, often unseen components that had been essential in helping the building to stand up – like little square slate cubes hidden like dowels between the penultimate and ultimate stone. It appealed to my love of the obvious and often overlooked. So here are a few of the long still life paintings done since 2014.
