Still life with crab

Chromacolour acrylic on MDF board. 59x79cm. Completed 7th April 2010.

I believe the Dutch still life painters were simply the greatest ‘recorders’ of what I like to call ‘the surface of things’. This is a contemporary version of the type of work done by the likes of Jan Davidsz de Heem or Willem Kalf, Dutch genre painters of the seventeenth century. The Dutch masters were the first true photorealists.

This is based on a photograph I took late in 2009 and it features a mango, bananas, a blue swimmer crab, a pineapple, a chinese hand painted bowl with capsicum, peaches, strawberries and grapes in it – there is a wedge of blue cheese, a seashell, a gold vase with roses and even a snowflake curio object in the painting. The table was a round one topped off with a difficult to paint cloth which is what I call ‘flip-flop’ colored. I think the technical term would refer to it as ‘interfering’ with the light.

Still life with fruit

Chromacolour acrylic on MDF board. 20x26cm. Completed 16th August 2009. Private collection.

One of great loves is that which I have for Dutch painting of the seventeenth century – which I consider to be the first era of photorealism.

As a contemporary artist I use a computer, but I still have to use my artistic skills to manipulate paint with brushes. I particularily love still life painting because they paint the surfaces of things so accurately and it is a joy to the eye to see what a two dimensional, flat, colored, bit of board (or canvas) can convey of the three dimensional world. When it is done well it makes me rather awestruck. This is what I try for in all of my work but its not the only thing.

Orange flowers

Chromacolour on MDF board. 20x26cm. Completed 21st July 2009.

Contemporary artists often think in terms of ideas and radical experimentation for their art. Rather than just being merely decorative and beautiful. In their pursuit of being seen as part of the avant garde they lose part of what it is to when you are an artist. Most often the sort of paintings that the general public want, are as simple as – flowers!

I’ve spent a lot of time painting these flowers – 48 hours to be exact. Photorealism isn’t easy to do. It is quite surprising what makes an image hard to do. It can be the colors, scale of the image or the surfeit of details. This painting was all three. Apparently these flowers are commonly known as ‘pigface’, or their proper name is ‘Carpobrotus rossii ‘.