An inch square nervous breakdown

Here’s a small still life painting (better quality photo required) that should have been completed in three shots. Instead, the 2 inch(ish) square containing the blue and white jug became the focus of so many re-workings, the hours spent on it far surpassed expectation. At one point yesterday I felt very much on the edge of a nervous breakdown as I tried to get it right for the umpteenth time.

I finally reached a point that I was happy with. I still see faults, but I don’t think I can improve it further without the risk of undoing some of the good work that is also present. I keep reminding myself that beauty lies in the imperfections. I set out to create a small, painterly response to a life subject, not to photographically record it.


Accentuating the positive, here’s what I believe I accomplished with this painting…

I wanted to compose a ‘scene’. Something that was more than a study of one or two still life items, but hinted at an interior space too. I made things difficult for myself by choosing an awkward angle and items (such as the plate and jug) whose arcs can break the illusion of perspective and weight by being placed only very slightly incorrectly. By and large though, I think the overall composition here does have depth and space, with the objects relating to each other as well as their environment.

I also wanted to play with scale and make this a small painting. I don’t always paint life-size, indeed I enjoy smaller scale work, but this still feels like a slight change in design for me. I think the result (which is difficult to show through photos) works really well. It is a painting that has a kind of precious quality that seems to be derived, in part, by the very size of it.

Finally, I didn’t want to overwork the detail, instead letting edges come in and out of focus and allowing the nature of paint itself to describe surfaces and form. Of course, this is much harder to achieve than it sounds, and keeping things just loose enough to make everything appear to fuse in just the right way is easy to kill with an ill-thoughtout brushstroke here or there. I hope I have given the markmaking enough breathing space to result in something that is understated and subtle, with atmosphere and an evocative sense of a shadowy corner where one might meditate on quiet thoughts.

Here are some progress and detail shots.