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Queen Mary 2 still life paintings
Painted in the studio of a friends house where I had access to lots of beautiful and interesting objects to paint. I think everything represented here had been picked up in local brocante markets like the big Sunday market at L'Isle-sur-le-Sorgue,
or local 'vide grenier' ie. garage sales. I was particularly drawn to the green glazes of the jug and bowl and set them off against the red patterned cloth and the pomegranites. The bird background is part of an old oriental style
screen, and the hat, a firemans cap.
Green Bowl with Pomegranites
40x35 oil on board, Jan 1999
Private Collection, France
This simple set up in the cupboard in the studio is one of an on going series , using the tiled background as a frame in which to set the bottle and one or two small objects. I have attempted to rely less on traditional compositional devices, with objects placed abruptly in the centre, or as here, paired slightly adrift from each other using the pattern and grid of the tiles, and the fall of the light
to balance the difference in their respective weights and sizes.
Still life with bottle and melon
46x55, oil on canvas, Sept 1999
LeCelle Gallery, San Francisco
A heavy glass vase containing a few dried chili peppers provided the starting point for this painting, and here the tone of the painting is much lighter, using shadow less as an element of the composition, and more compressed, with the motif fully contained in the height. I liked the slight 'Tower of Pisa' lean of the vase against the rigid
grid of the tiles , and the distorting effect of the glass. The spiky hot red chilli peppers provide a sharp color contrast to the green of the glass, and add to a sense of movement created by, and contained within the bounds of
the vase .
Dragons (Vase with Chilli Peppers)
30x40, oil on canvas, Aug 1999
Castile Galerie, Charlotte, NC.
A group of quinces on the edge of a table, their golden Autumn colour picked out by the morning light set me off here. An exercise in color and paint, freely executed with comparitively large brushes and completed over a single session, this small painting is an example of an occasional change of style I find it useful to adopt, in order to prevent myself becoming overly concerned with detail, and to maintain a fresh approach, the paint is thickly textured with dragged and stretched brushmarks criss-crossing the canvas,.
Quinces
22x16, oil on board, Nov 1998
Private Collection, France
One of the first of this series of paintings, I used the angle created by the meeting of the wall and the horizontal surface to lead into the picture, which is picked up by the bunch of lavender, leading the eye in towards the grouping
of the lemon, and bottles. This gives a strong sense of three dimensionality making it easier for the viewer to enter into the percieved space. Another strong formal element is created by the shadow fall slanting down from the
top edge forming an 'S' shape following the pattern of the tiles down to the lemon and lavender,which bisects the painting, along the vertical axis, into tesselating light and dark halves, the darker containing all the objects.
Still Life with Lemon, Lavender and Bottles
61x50, oil on canvas, June 1999
Private collection, France
Painted at the same time as the Lemon and Lavender painting, this is divided again into a light and a dark half only this time along the diagonal axis.
Still Life with Lemon and Bottle
50x61, oil on canvas, May 1999
Private collection, Canada
Petit Dejeuner
25x30, oil on board, June 1999
Private Collection, UK
These baby turnips attracted my eye in the market with their extraordinary reds and violet set off by the miniature green leaves which had started to re-shoot from their crowns, I bought them knowing exactly how I wanted the painting to look, and as soon
as I got back to the studio I painted this.
Navets
22x16, oil on board, May 1999
Private Collection, UK
Still Life with Lemon
25x30, oil on canvas, May 1999
Private collection, USA