White Pears #19

'White Pears #19'

oil on canvas/10" x 14"/February 2016

Completed this very afternoon, the latest painting off the production line but the first one of the year following our pre- and post-Yuletide/New Year lull. Previously featured in its nascent, underpainted state, this still life composition features as its subject/object matter three of the recently re-made/re-modelled pears, whose finger- and thumb-faceted, handmade surfaces encouraged, via close observation, a revision of the painting technique from the broader approach employed towards the latter part of last year, a slight calming of the rigorousness of the brushstrokes and a more apparently contemplative approach to the painting.

 

Currently reading Janet Abramowicz’s ‘Giorgio Morandi: The Art of Silence’, with a great deal of relish and interest, certain aspects of this fascinating artist’s practice obviously chime with my own concerns, not least his commitment to seriality and, in the words of James Thrall Soby as quoted in the book, Morandi’s conducting of “persistent research into form and space within a narrow iconographic range”, something I fully intend to continue – these white pears as observed against and upon a white ground obsess me as an artist.