Dramatic Narrative: There was a time, when objects had more dings and scratches, more character, and many memories associated with them. A hand-woven table cloth, or a cooking dish, like a cast-iron pot, was sometimes passed down from one generation to the next and seemed to carry the family history with it. It could spark distant memories. For me, these are childhood memories of endless summers spent at the seaside with my grandparents. But that old pot can also help us see how quickly our years go by and how irrecoverably gone are the days of our childhood. The roses in the composition are dry, suggesting the passage of time and death itself. It is that sense of beauty, character and passage of time that inspired me to paint these old objects.

Technical Narrative (composition): I wanted the scene to appear impromptu - as if the owner of the house placed these objects there temporarily, and then left home never to return, leaving the viewer with a window through time. To achieve this mood, I placed some of the objects at the edges of the composition and slightly cropped them. In addition, I used diffused cool lighting (which created almost no shadows). Thus, the objects do not appear to be purposefully lit, but rather receive ambient light from elsewhere.  Painted from life.