Still life with Cactus, Acrylic on Stretched Canvas 12” x 16”

Art Musings

Feb 6

Originally published January 14, 2024

I find myself increasingly drawn to still life, perhaps due to its relative feasibility. After all, I do not really have to contend with atmospheric perspective or portraying distance as I would with landscapes. Or portraying movement as I would with seascapes (waves are still a mystery to me) or even with realistic rocky texture when painting mountains. More and more, I find that I am getting the hang of highlights and shadow and what is still life painting but the capturing of light on an inert object?

This next piece, acrylic on hand stretched canvas, "Still Life with Cactus", 16" x 12" (L x W) went through different iterations. It started off as a scene in a forest, painted from a Skillshare tutorial. However, I started to get frustrated, as I often do now, when painting from tutorials because my vision for the piece took me somewhere else entirely. I ended up scrapping that painting, applying a couple of layers of Gesso and starting over. I came across Van Gogh's "Still Life with Flowering Almond Branch". However, instead of painting the exact same thing, I decided to use my Easter cactus plant as a prop to stand in for the almond branch. So I painted the book in hues of bright magenta, contrasted with the green in my cactus plant and the almost faded minty ceramic pot, against a background of phthalo green and blue. While I spent weeks in the earlier iteration of this painting (the forest scene) trying to get it exactly the way I want, I spent a few days on this painting. Once I got the dimensions and perspectives down, it was just a matter of placing highlights and shadows where I saw them. I've found when I keep the composition simple and work quickly, I often get the results (or as close to it) that I want. I decided to keep it simple, I did not want to add too many elements to the composition as I wanted the contrasting colors to speak for themselves: the bright teal wall, with the yellow table top, tying in to the green of the cactus and the bright pop of magenta in the book. Also, I found the texture from the older painting beneath it and the layers of gesso worked to enhance the piece by giving it a rough, tactile look. Even though, I deviated from Van Gogh's painting, I did use a similar technique, which is to outline the objects with a dark color.