Melanie Parke
The Still Life
Light is the main character in my work. Or maybe it is air. I walk in twilight to observe the moon, the stars. In daylight, to watch the sun in the sky and the little things below.
Composing a still life with the obvious identifiers - a bouquet, a bowl of fruit - what I want to give my viewer is a feeling of chasing light. I’m curious how light effects can make a chimera of things - a mutation - as if lifting the weight out of what is knowable.
Cezanne’s idea of passing through objects is something I think about a lot. Even when the entire plane of one of my paintings is engaged in pattern, I’m going for a sense of never-ending transparencies, passing through walls and hard surfaces, to keep the eye going, passing to the other side of a thing. To keep looking.
I reconstruct interiors and garden motifs through ideology and memory. Collecting imagery representative of care, tenderness, nostalgia, I am interested in a practice of attentive observation. An affection for slowness.
Windows and doors give structure to the ephemeral. At the edge of these portals are sometimes offerings, material objects that appear close at hand, seen and touched with the imagination. Tracing the gestures made by other artists in a familiar postcard, ceramic or sculpture, these are a nod to the conversations that go on between artists. What was once ephemeral has solidity in our remembering. We keep talking to artist friends and mentors through all the years of literature and art history.
Flowers, which embody brevity, generosity, sentiment, center most of my work. The presence of birds suggests curiosity and wonder, sometimes allegories of fragility, sometimes euphoria. I’m looking for visual lushness. Contemplation. Sensations of consolation, longing and desire.
Apple Cider Pansy 30 x 30 inches. Oil on canvas
Celadon Glaze 48 x 52 inches oil on canvas
Robins Egg
20 x 16
oil on canvas
Sevres Glass
16 x 12 inches
oil on canvas
Butter and Cream
24 x 18 inches
oil on canvas
Floret Night Hours
48 x 58 inches
oil on canvas