Analysis Of Janet Green

’s Still Life With Tamarillos Essay, Research Paper

5. Analysis of Janet Green s Still Life with Tamarillos

Still Life with Tamarillos is an exceptionally detailed artwork. The artwork consists of a platter of tamarillos in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. It is an artwork painted by acrylic on board, and every paint stroke is delicately realistic. This follows her usual formula of a still life image in the foreground of a truly Australian landscape. No relationship is evident between the still life image and the landscape. No interpretation of her work is necessary. Green says she aims for her work to be visually pleasing and does not attempt to put an idea or concept forward. All in all, for what Green has set out to do, Still Life with Tamarillos is a very good artwork. Green is obviously one of the most technically proficient Australian artists around.

Still Life with Tamarillos is an artwork based in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. It has a platter of food in the foreground of the image, consisting of an old what appears to be a saucepan, full of tamarillos, and an old corroding can full of green grapes. Stringy bark intertwines between the fruit. The forefront image appears to be on a type of white table. The background is highly detailed, and presents a highly stereotypical outback Australian look. The use of dirt red in really exenterates this. The piece is acrylic on board. The board has no texture so that the artwork is primary the paints, and every fine detail is possible. Green paints the still life image first, using models in front of her for stimulus. She then actually heads out to the place she intends on painting the backdrops and fills the background in. This is very effective.

Green obviously plans and prepares her artworks. Still Life with Tamarillos is no different. She again paints to the formula that has served her so well for the past fifteen years. The formula is having a still life image in the foreground of a completely unrelated Australian background. The artwork is very visually pleasing, and the mood of the artwork is more or less relaxing. It deals with warm colours, mainly red, but creates the feeling that one gets in the Australian bush, one of serenity. Peace can almost be felt in the artwork.

It is suprising then, that Green says there is no motive beyond making the artwork visually pleasing in creating this artwork. She says she aims to please your eyes . And she does too, quite well in fact. She appears to be influenced by early masters of the Flemish, Italian and Spanish schools, where truthfulness to nature was the rationale . Unlike those masters, according to Solander Gallery director Joy Warren, the strange thing and possibly even an abstract idea about this artwork, and in fact that of all her work is the fact there is no relationship between the foreground still life image and the background.

Still Life with Tamarillos is a very good artwork technique wise. She has great technical proficiency . This is quite noticeable even to the untrained eye in Still Life with Tamarillos. The artwork has been very well executed. Each leaf in a tree in the background, each seed in a tamarillo are defined. She is a realistic painter, but it is her use of depth of field which really gets a viewer interested. All the artwork being in focus not only makes the artwork hard to present because the artwork has to be in perspective in order to create the depth of field, but also because so much detail has to go into the entire image.

And Green does this very well. She is just so good technically, that her images come together exceptionally. Still Life with Tamarillos is a brilliant artwork, and being sold for $5,750 seems like a bargain to any true art collector. It follows Green s formula which she uses so well. The detail in this artwork is so good. She uses colours well, and despite having no apparent relationship between her foreground and background, a true sense of peace is created. All in all, Still Life with Tamarillos is a superb piece of art.