"I paint flowers so they will not die."
—Frida Kahlo
Dear Studio Mates,
I’ve recorded a little note on still lifes for you to walk to, paint to, draw to, journal to, or just listen to in a moment of (seeking) stillness. I confess I haven’t found that stillness for myself this, but it’s something to aim for. (I sometimes find these through lines I’m drawn to are often the thing I’m reaching for and craving.)
I am, however, reveling in and appreciating home, the studio, and the comfort offered therein even amidst a flurious February.
May you find and capture a moment of still(ness and) life leading into the weekend—
“Still life generally means painting of things within reach,
unexceptional things found on tables and shelves, often (though not necessarily) food:
bowls,
plates,
glasses,
bottles,
jugs,
fruits,
flowers,
but also
books,
pipes,
documents,
and the bric-a-brac of the daily round.
They are things that, either because they come from nature, or because they are intended for purposes that do not change, remain unaltered over great spans of time.”
—Norman Bryson (Critical Inquiry)
Why still life?
In writing about the appeal of still life, Elizabeth Vallance
“[Still lives] depict the things in people’s own lives or reflect lives people can imagine living. Successful still-life arrangements hold the viewer’s attention with a clear focus, compelling color and texture….still-life paintings work by seeming both accessible and visually interesting. They seem to celebrate the everyday life of objects….we create meaning out of the blur of everyday life each time we select a part of it .
—Elizabeth Vallance
Find and notice a still life around you
Corita Kent: “[The finder] is a device, which does the same things as the camera lens or viewfinder. It helps us take things out of context, allows us to see for the sake of seeing, and enhances our quick-looking and decision-making skills”
The whole principle of storytelling is jeopardized or paralyzed by the hearer’s objection: ‘So what’? But still life loves the ‘so what’…it shows what it shows simply because ‘these things were there’.
Arranged & encode into your still life
Frida & Still LIfes: "She would probe the insides of fruits and flowers, the organs hidden beneath the wounded flesh, and the feelings hidden beneath stoic features."3 Kahlo's still lifes reconsider the function of humble objects; she recognizes in them an identity to which only she is privy. Imbuing them with human characteristics, these traditional kitchen items are intentionally disconnected from domestic space to become eerily unfamiliar, exalted actors in unique events or great dramas representing independent emotional states, metaphysical outcomes, or social situations.” Biography, Hayden Harrera
Living still life
In a History in Pictures, the painter Georges Braque is quoted saying,
When a still life is no longer within reach, it ceases to be a still life.
For me that expressed the desire I have always to touch a thing, not just to look at it....So I began to paint chiefly still lifes, because in nature there is a tactile, I would almost say a manual space.'
Effectively, Braque was painting his own mental world…'Everything', he declared later, is subject to metamorphosis, everything changes according to circumstance. So when you ask me whether a particular form in one of my paintings depicts a woman's head, a fish, a vase, or a bird, or all four at once, I can't give you a categorical answer.' …Braque's remark to a fellow painter,I am in the middle of my canvases like a gardener among his trees.'
To your delight—
Nikkita
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