Still Life Journeys series
This work was inspired by my many years of teaching and learning about Rembrandt Peale’s Rubens Peale with a Geranium, 1808. Housed at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC the painting has long fascinated me for the extraordinary amount of meaning and information it contains. In my painting, Peale’s work appears in the background, partially obscured by a large potted geranium. His painting includes two pairs of eyeglasses; in the foreground of my painting is a pair of glasses that I wear myself. A stack of art books sits directly in front of Peale’s painting, suggesting both study and conversation across generations.
The work is at once personal and observational. It brings together looking and learning, art and science, and the accumulation of knowledge over time. The objects become evidence of an ongoing conversation between paintings, artists, viewers, and the natural world and of the continuing, ever-expanding line of art history.