Still life assignment

Still life with Containers, 24" by 30", acrylic on canvas, 2011

The subjects for my still life painting are containers: vases, bowls, bottles, etc. They are a metaphor for the human body which is also a container of sorts. Vases are interesting because they are pure forms that contain space; their form follows their function (with some decorative embellishments). I decided to make a painting that wasn’t “painterly”. I wanted to use the masking technique that we saw with one of the student’s presentations last week (the paintings made from computer renderings) and I also wanted to use painting implements other than the familiar (ie. brushes and palette knives). After I had composed the image, I thought it would be interesting to lay in more colours in a topographic kind of way with the brightest colours representing parts of the still life that are closest to the viewer and the darkest parts being the furthest. This process made for an interesting effect. I decided to leave the perimeter of the painting “unpainted” because I wanted to show the drips of each successive layer. In this way, the unfinished area makes reference not only to the temporal aspect of making the painting but also alludes to the fact that these objects represented on the surface are made up of only coloured liquid. It an interesting juxtaposition of 3d illusion versus the flatness of the picture plane. I used yellow and blue as my two colours because they offer the highest ranges of tints and shades.