Sunday, January 15, 2012

Things of Our Longing

 Candy Fruit Slices
14" x 10"
2012

"A painter in order to have a picture really feel the fullness of life needs to use glowing light, glinting light, glaring light, light which is very effusive, out-of-focus, in focus."

~ Wayne Thiebaud from the book, Wayne Thiebaud at Museo Morandi

I received the above book for Christmas this year and it's an interesting comparison - Thiebaud and Morandi.  Thiebaud's best known paintings depict things like lollipops, cake, ice cream cones. An image of a Thiebaud cake was used by Google on September 27, 2010 to celebrate their 12th birthday.  Morandi is best known for his arrangements of monochrome bottles and anonymous rectangles.

In the same book, Thiebaud is quoted as saying,

"What I may be putting down in my paintings is, in some way, tattletale evidence of what we are as people.  Introducing things of our longing or when we have a sense of intimacy."

detail of Candy Fruit Slices


Still life is constantly interesting to me because of its intimacy, because of the challenge of translating paint into the illusion of light, and because of what the objects say about us as human beings.

Below are pictures of the palette I used when painting the above picture.

The more I paint the more I realize colour gives the object its weight and it's through our experience and interaction with colour that we become sensitive to the mood of the image.




6 comments:

  1. Wow! I love how that painting just made my mouth water! For candy, for painting, for glass, for light, for everything. Are these some of the candies Chloe gets to chew now?

    Kimmy

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  2. Astounding how much color and texture that light creates in so-called clear glass. Complex yet transparent at the same time. And my mouth is reacting to the contents inside the jar, anticipating sweet and possibly sour.

    The photos of the paint blobs on the palette are exquisite.

    Angie

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  3. Your breadth of subject matter is breathtaking--from shimmering sugar within glass to the fabulous mysteries of Venice, your work never fails to astonish and delight.

    Barb

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  4. Beautiful painting, Rob! This is what touches me from your work and your wife's: your connection with the simplicity of life, to things around us that make us vibrate and how you find ways to share that connection; as you say, how you manage to, portray light, mood and weight through paint! :)

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  5. What a delicious, sparkling image on such a gloomy, cold day..... Thanks, Rob.

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  6. Absolutely delicious in every way. I truly envy your days, immersed in such colour! The photos of the paint palette make me wonder if you have ever painted a still life of the paint palette?

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