Classic Still Life

The greatest flowering of still life painting was in the Dutch ‘golden Age’ of the 17^thcentury.

It was a time of social and religious upheaval. In the rest of Europe religious paintings ruled. These images were banned in the churches of Calvinist Netherlands and this flowed through to their homes. Instead they created masterful still life’s that celebrated trade. Flowers, fish, cheese, shells, exotic fruits, porcelain. They also placed highly symbolic objects in the works that often told hidden stories.

Magicians use smoke and mirrors to delight audiences. In the 17^th century there was a roaring trade in Trompe-l’œil paintings deigned to “fool the eye”.

I play with this theme in a series of surreal still life’s. Bubbles containing ornate cowfish floating through the air, busting unexpectadly. The bubble is a vanitas symbol, it’s life is short but glorious.

For me the fish in a bubble is a symbol of the perils of climate change and the rapidly dwindling population of marine creatures.

Mortality has always been a preoccupation for still life painters and photographers.  Fruit, flowers, insects, smoke, bubbles and of course the skull are all potent symbols of the transience of life.

In the 17^thcentury the plague and religious wars preoccupied the population, today we rightly fear climate change which could be vastly more devastating.

In the 17^thcentury the French Académie de peinture et de sculpture developed a hierarchy of painting genres. With history, mythology and religious paintings at the top followed by portraits, everyday life, landscape, animal painting and finally still life. If a 17^thcentury still life painter wanted to elevate him or herself, adding a self-portrait (usually in a reflection) was one way to do it. And it does cheat death.

In the 17^thcentury the French Académie de peinture et de sculpture developed a hierarchy of painting genres. With history, mythology and religious paintings at the top followed by portraits, everyday life, landscape, animal painting and finally still life. If a 17^thcentury still life painter wanted to elevate him or herself, adding a self-portrait (usually in a reflection) was one way to do it. And it does cheat death.