Timely: still life paintings by Antoinette Tyndall and Kate Nielsen: 20 November

Artists worldwide are redefining the genre – the still life under constant reinterpretation as the creative process pays homage to its long history.

Antoinette Tyndall

Like human life, fruit is perishable and ephemeral, and thus many critics firmly believe that fruit acts as a representation of the transient nature of our existence. However, for many artists the reason for painting such objects like bread or fruit can be to demonstrate compositional skill, lighting techniques, or to show how well they can make these items come to life on canvas.

Though modest in size, Antoinette’s still life paintings have a remarkable sense of grandeur. Assembling only a few objects, often on a plain stone plate, the artist conveys monumentality of presence usually found in much larger and more complex still life paintings. Bathed in soft light, every element quietly asserts its essential properties.

All but one of these small paintings are 30 x 30 cm and sold either unframed or framed in a float Tasmanian oak.

Kate Nielsen

Kate portrays her own home, and that of friends and family, in a pleasant frenzy of different rooms and patterns. Her use of brilliant colour and expressive form, seeks to create work that often has a comforting, calming influence on the mind, “rather like a good armchair,” as the master of colour and patterns himself, Matisse once said. Kate’s fearless use of colour, pattern and movement transfer well to the world of interior design and her remarkable paintings of carefully arranged still life vases of flowers, jugs with various fruits and lemons (typical of her works) are hugely popular.