Still Life With Sunflowers
Above is completed still life with Sunflowers, lemons, and
apples. I painted this still life following certain rules of composition,
playing with colors and shapes.
Old Masters paintings, and in particular still life, always
fascinated me. The details, techniques, the composition and perspective usually
show a great deal of skill and many years of hard work learning and practicing.
I also fell in love with the fact that at the first glance
simple objects placed on the canvas or paper get their own meaning, telling their
own story, sometimes leaving the viewer wonder and imagine.
For example, in seventeenths century Dutch still life the
Sunflowers were symbolizing faithfulness, divine love, and devotion.
Fruits, let’s say a peeled lemon, were like life, attractive to look at, but
bitter to taste. Apples, especially with a bite, would return us to a
biblical story. Knife might suggest a transience of human life; but, together
with some seafood, it would change the meaning towards the reproducing implication.
And so on and on.
I placed the flowers and fruits not only because they are so
pretty; but, also to show a combination of different colors, the gifts from
Fall. My knife in the composition plays an important role as a transformation pointer. It connects one part of the still life (the one with apples and
bottle) to a part with Sunflowers. I suggested that I cut the lemon with this
knife before placing it on the plate.
Meantime the objects that are holding the fruits and flowers,
each of them have a great history themselves:
- Metal vase with Sunflowers was an inheritance of my
husband’s grandparents
- Elongated plate for cut lemon was given to me by my
friend. It is a part of 1921 Bavarian set.
- The cutting board is made of salvaged 1800 century wood
- The ceramic bowl with apples is also special. I made it
from clay 4 years ago.
It is interesting how simple objects of a still life
painting can tell a lot; yet, just sitting there in the painting and looking
pretty!
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For more still life paintings visit my gallery:
