Still life with a Mask and a Birthday

‘Still life with a Mask and a Birthday’

Creating an illustrative painting in response to 17th century vanitas with humorous elements, she has explored how memento mori can be used within the modern world, turning the traditional elements satirical. Using a primed canvas and acrylic paints, she collected modern items and used them as a juxtaposition to the original vanitas ideas. While traditional vanitas focused on symbols like skulls and decaying flowers, she has chosen to include modern technology, most evidently in her decision to use an image of a skull on the screen of the laptop, still including the concept of cognitive dissonance (tension between the human desire for pleasure and the awareness of inevitable death) but with a more relevant twist. Once she had the elements she wanted to paint and setting them up in a way that reflected that of the old masters. Though the original reference image was a bit bare, she added more objects as the painting developed, resulting in a crowded painting. Being mindful of what colours she used, the painting went through a number of background changes, from blue to peach, then finally green. Not influenced by an individual artist but rather the collective of vanitas artists, it allowed her to be freer in her chosen objects.