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Character Studies: Still life paintings by Ellen Fischer

 

Still life painting is more to me than handsome parlor pictures of fruit and flowers. Like my landscape and figural paintings, my still life paintings are part of my ongoing autobiography writ small, of places I have experienced and people I know. They are objects that have found themselves on the worktable in my studio, gifts from friends, purchases from junk stores, arranged to form a tableau from an unknown story. My still life objects have lives of their own. This animistic view of tabletop things of metal, wood, clay, glass, and other materials  --including the traditional "dead" fruit-- is my own, but I suspect it is shared by others, too.

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To me objects take on souls and personalities when they are used in a still life composition. Even the most unlikely object -- an ear syringe perhaps-- transcends its common use to become a conveyor of elegance, an aristocratic form when placed in conjunction with other unlooked for objects, say, a small oil can and a paring knife. Above all, they are not Disneyfied teapots and clocks, broad characterizations mean to manipulate the emotions of the audience, but well-rounded characters. Each has a part to play in a drama that allows their audience to judge them on their merits as actors, not simply as objects. Like words in an essay or lyrics in a song, my painted objects convey meaning that evoke not a single emotion or reaction, but a range of thoughts and feelings as the arrangement is perceived as a whole.