3 x Silver

This painting continues my ongoing fascination with the quiet drama that occurs when ordinary objects are allowed to become mirrors. Three silver vessels—each with its own personality of curve, handle and spout—sit on a polished surface that doubles every form and every colour. Between them rest a single peach whose warm, matte skin refuse to shine. The contrast is deliberate: the fruit absorbs light while the metal returns it, fractured, inverted and enriched.

I am less interested in the objects themselves than in the space that appears inside them. Windows, ceiling beams and the faint silhouette of a figure drift across the rounded bodies of the pots, turning a simple still life into a compressed interior. The peaches, with their soft orange glow, anchor the composition in the tangible world and prevent the reflections from becoming pure abstraction. Their colour is the only strong chromatic note in an otherwise cool, silvery field; everything else is a study in how light behaves when it has nowhere to hide.

Working in oil, I build the surfaces slowly, letting thin layers of cool greys and warmer neutrals interact until the metal feels both solid and transparent. The final glazes are what allow the reflections to hover just beneath the surface of the paint, so that the viewer’s eye is invited to move continuously between the physical objects and the illusory spaces they contain.

In the end, the painting is about attention. It asks us to notice how much of the world is already present in the things we pass by every day — how a kettle can hold a room, and how a peach can hold the light.