For Table Talk Red Fox Contemporary presents an expansive view of the still life genre with nine

artists:

Colleen Franca

Wendy Klemperer

Margaret McCann

Jesse McCloskey

Allison Meyler

Patrick Neal

Cathy Nan Quinlan

Marcy Rosewater

Rachel Youens

“The forms of still life are strong enough to make the difference between existence and human

life; without them there is no continuity of generation, no human legacy, only an intermittent

and flickering chaos; with them, there is cultural memory and family, an authentically civilized

world.”

Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked

The creation of a painting from still life resides in the artist’s ability to imbue a sense of

familiarity while alluding to much more than the description of inert objects.

To paint is to invent, whether it be photo realism, abstraction, plein air, landscape, or any other

genre or style.

Still life paintings leave an aura of the artist’s silent presence amidst the transitory frailness of

nature; the theme of vanitas, our mortality, is evident in these paintings.

The artists included in this exhibit, whether working from observation, photograph, or a

combination of the two, pay homage to overlooked moments. As the French philosopher

Gaston Bachelard pointed out, “Representation becomes nothing but a body of expressions

with which to communicate our own images to others.”

-Cecilia Whittaker-Doe