MOMENTS IN TIME

COLLECTOR'S FOCUS STILL LIFES

- JOHN O’HERN

The Egyptians depicted funerary paintings of food in the 15 th century BCE. The tradition of still life painting reached a height in the Dutch Golden Age between 1575 and 1675, with extraordinarily realistic, dramatic and heavily symbolic paintings of abundance. Among them, vanitas paintings contained a skull alluding to the ephemeral nature of it all.

The tradition of still lifes continues today unburdened of universally accepted symbolism and open to the visceral inspiration of artists that resonates on a more personal level with the viewer.

Frank Oriti first came to fame painting portraits of his peers who had left their native Cleveland and “returned to places we attempted to escape.” He has moved “beyond portraits and figure paintings in the last five years, painting denim, leather jackets and sneakers that have all made me realize how I look and how I study things when I go about painting them. Making sure they are centrally placed, being able to control soft and hard edges, and the overall form that these objects take are all worthy of close inspection during the painting process.”