Why Still Life?
My interest had a linguistic foundation. The translation of Still Life in Spanish is Naturaleza Muerta (nature's death). I was fascinated by the fact that the same concept can be perceived from presupposed opposites, in this case life and death. This linguistic paradox indirectly questions the world of dualities by which we live in the West and confirms that the world we perceive depends on where we see it from. Nothing is written in blood so to speak. Even though a Still Life was thought to be inferior during the Renaissance, throughout the twentieth century, artists have constantly challenged, overcome and renovated the genre, using it as a vehicle to rewrite the past and also to overthrow former traditions. A good example of this is Andy Warhol's Campbell soup can, which mimics the condition of mass advertising speaking eloquently about the condition of image overload in a media saturated culture.Still Life is a system of representation which evolves over time and which reflects the relationship between art, society and its objects, embodying the moral values, the economy and the social mores of an époque. I find it is useful to practice a technique within an already established formula as it has allowed me to concentrate on the composition and colour of the piece, in other words, the harmony and the use of space.