Vanitas

The starting point for this project was vanitas-type still-life paintings. The origin of the term is from Ecclesiastes, Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas (1:2) (Vanity of vanities; all is vanity) In vanitas paintings there are usually appears a human skull, whose purpose is to remind us of life’s ephemeral nature, the pointlessness of pleasures, and the inescapability of death. I find the vanitas theme in every still life, whether it depicts fruit, tableware, or other attributes of daily life, reminders of my own transience and the transience of all that surrounds me. I have created a still life of myself, a world of things that are an abstraction of something familiar and real, an attempt to convey, through form, a feeling of fragility, instability, and even un-belongingness.