OPENING NIGHT Tuesday 3 December 6pm to 8pm
ARTIST TALK Saturday 14 December 2:30pm
Before the French adopted the Italian name for still life, natura morta, they called it “vie coyte”, quiet life. This is both more poetic and more accurately descriptive, because there is nothing dead about still life; rather it is an exploration of the silent but intense relationship between the objects, between them and the space in which they exist, and between them and the light which strikes and illuminates them and the atmosphere which surrounds them. It is the patient exploration of these, always directly from the arrangement of the objects, and never from photographs, which I find so enthralling. To create an enchanted world of light and space, subtlety and delicacy, and tender emotion, is the still life painter’s highest achievement.
I see it as one of the realist painter’s tasks to open people’s eyes to the wonders of creation, to lift the grey veil of the ordinary to reveal the magic behind. It is our choice whether we see light, joy, and purity, or darkness, gloom, and corruption, for we paint ourselves as much as we paint the subject, and we reveal our souls to a sensitive observer with every brushstroke.
Building on the achievements of the best painters of the past and attempting to breath new life into an ancient tradition is quite contrary to the present zeitgeist, but it seems that the true conservative is becoming the new radical.
This exhibition is another step in my fifty years’ quest for beauty and perfection.
– Ross Harvey 2024.
