Still Life is Still Life

This is a rabbit Pez dispenser with an old-school CRT computer monitor in tha background. When you are planning a still-life, it can be more interesting to include the environment. It is even more interesting if you make it personal. At the time I loved bunnies, candy, and was a computer technician. When I see this ink drawing I don't just think of it as an old practice drawing. I see it as a snapshot back to an earlier time in my life.

I don't think still life's get enough credit. People love landscapes, portraits, and abstract art. Still life's are so often seen as student work, and it doesn't help that we use them so often for "studies" of an object or method. But here's the thing. Van Gogh's Sunflowers are adored because of the the bloody emotion he put into cut flowers. He was a master or landscapes, but he understood the preciousness of a single object.

Plus... just because it is painted for practice doesn't mean it's not a real painting. It just might mean less to some people than others. I've had to beat that into my head over the last few years but in the opposite way. I was too down on myself to try painting "for real." So I only let myself do quick, small paintings on cardboard and cheap paper. It didn't matter how they turned out, because they weren't "real." Some of those unreal paintings are pretty fantastic.

All art is real art. It just comes from and is going to a different place. And that's fine. Most art is destined for obscurity anyway. So just go with it.