During the first national lockdown I was struggling to find inspiration to continue my main body of work in the confines of my flat. I started to take in my surroundings which gave me a feeling to paint from life. Finding inspiration from my various possessions I developed an interest in painting objects placed a box. I felt that I myself, wasn’t much different to the object.
I found myself intrigued by metal objects, a subject that reappears in these paintings is the Toby Jug. These objects are quite the contrast to the fruit that I painted a year earlier. I enjoyed the freedom of not worrying about my subject degrading overtime it allowed me to scrutinise over each painting.
I enjoyed the challenge of painting a metallic object. The colour varies depending on what type of light source you project onto it. It was with these paintings that I started to experiment with the perception of what objects are. The relationship between two metallic objects is very intriguing to me, the reflections quite literally bounce off each other giving me an endless choice of possibilities for painting.
I put objects out of their context as a way to challenge the viewer, that is why I left the painting above untitled. In this sense I am inviting the viewer to make their own interpretations of what they see in the image without limiting the answer to my own understanding. At this stage I found myself letting go of the stigma surrounding still life painting. Beginning to enjoy the freedom of expression through a genre that has nearly exclusively been represented by food.
Dottie-may Aston 