Memento Mori || Painting From Old Closet

While looking through my old works from my high school days, I came across a couple of still lifes. I won't pretend to be proud of the result of my teenage efforts, but I nevertheless return to this work quite often.

The still lifes that Professor M. set up for us usually took up an entire wall of the studio. To the casual passer-by, our still lifes looked like an extreme case of syllogomy(pathological collecting).

Professor M encouraged us to choose unconventional frames - as a result, our works often looked more like abstractions than classic still lifes.

From time to time, however, there was something in these crazy compositions that you couldn't take your eyes off of. A sad, shabby model of a skeleton caught my eye. I made a few drawings with this lonely, bony gentleman, and then decided to paint it as well.

There is no denying that the work is not finished - it lacks detail and the so called 'point of focus' (the place where the artist wants to hold the viewer's attention for the longest time). I didn't manage to finish the work in four hours(that's how long a single painting classes would last), and the following week the still life took on a completely different form, and my pale friend disappeared. I found it difficult to return to painting falling apart bicycles, broken jars and straw hats.

The skeleton, even such a mediocre quality model that we used in class - adds an unwanted context to the painting. It is hard not to question its objectivity.

Even the plastic imitation of death makes us feel uncomfortable. And yet we look for death. We listen to podcasts about murderers, watch scary documentaries, read crime stories. Driven by curiosity - we fall into the cold embrace of hospitable death.

Hopefully not for good:)