still life | RHYMES&REASONS

Tag: still life

Conscious Incompetence

Uncomfortable, frustrating, deflating and dispiriting all rolled into one. This is the state of conscious incompetence. And I am right bang in the middle of it.

The pleasure of learning a new skill has been replaced by the cold reality of daylight. The thrill of finding I could produce a painting which was ‘presentable’ has, three years on, been sharply highlighted by a gaping lack of experience. The short-term affirmation of social media approval and modest sales has been replaced by a cringing reluctance to stick my head above the public parapet.

There is so very much to learn, so much work to do, as a musician applies herself to scales so the painter must learn and practice the techniques and technicalities of their art. Long hours in the studio, alone with your thoughts and insecurities accompanied only by the silent (and sometimes not so!) monologue of self criticism.

But something drives me on, the glimpse of an idea captured on canvas, crossing the threshold of nebulous to form laying down a moment in time, an outward incarnation of an inner life. There is something calling out, bigger than and beyond me, enticing and playing with my heart a I struggle and strive; it at once elates and then strips me bare. Cleansing, simplifying, purifying and humbling perhaps one day it will enlighten also as to the core nature of this oily world in which I find myself immersed.

Top: ‘Poetry with Pomegranate and Plum’ Above: ‘Trio of Plums with Blue Jug’

Rebecca Pells Artist

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November 5, 2016

Still Life – a Personal Heritage

‘Silver Jug with Lime’ 2016

Many of us seek an identity – or perhaps seek to escape from ourselves – through the things with which we choose to clutter our lives. Most are transient, outliving their usefulness, unable to keep up with our changing desires as the years pass by. Few linger long after we have gone, travelling in time in a way which is closed to us.

There is a comfort in the familiar, in the multilayered existence of inheritance; a stabilizing, grounding sense of belonging which comes from things with which we grew up, the landmarks by which we navigated our early years. They are the threshold between our history and the present, between what has been, what is and what is yet to come. A kind of immortality we ourselves cannot achieve.

Such objects become integrated and entwined in our personal history handed down from generation to generation.

A familial wave passing through our lives.

‘Silver Spoon with Lime’ 2016