"Silver Teapot and Glass"
This week’s featured painting is “Silver Teapot and Glass” from 2007. It is done with oil on linen on panel, and measures 8 x 10 inches.
I never get tired of looking at glass.
Sometimes when I’m setting up my paintings, I will spend hours placing different pieces of glassware in the composition – just to see what they will do.
And what they do is wonderous.
Move the glass a little to the right, and the teacup handle balloons into a tree.
Move it a little to the left, and the rim of the glass catches the light just the right way to make a starburst of brilliant highlights.
This substance – which is almost not there – has this amazing power to bend and the world beyond it – twisting clear shapes we know into unrecognizable phantasms, and fragmenting clear light into a burst of brilliant colors.
Of course, I know that everything I see when I look at glass is the result of a few simple laws of physics.
But as I watch it reimagine the world around it, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m watching that seems alive.
And that is magic.
“Silver Teapot and Glass” is an older painting, done just at around the time I was beginning to focus on still life.
Canvas prints of this painting are available. To see more, click the blue button below.