THE STILL LIFE 2026

This is the latest development in the Studio.

The Still Life has many forms but I am limited by my studio, all the things on the table: jug, glasses, bottles. The studio and the gathered objects are as silent as the Still Life is silent and it is essentially an ‘art of silence’. It is certainly a return to the student beginning with Still Life. At the Slade the Still Life School almost felt like a Still Life itself. The White (not Bob White) Still Life as student exercises. But the Still Life leads towards vision coming into focus, the painting of familiar objects, a repertoire of painted edges, an austerity of things. An exterior space rather than seeing new things, old friends are prepped together, not mirroring the world rather more re-encoding. One thinks about edges many of which are essentially a proposition which inhabit space as a history of things seen, rather than searching for something new. Very post-modernist – a performance of simulations rather than originality. The colour references much of the tonal concepts of colour that preoccupied Seurat: secondary and tertiary tones alongside primary. Within the narrow spectrum I revisit the objects instead of making something new, I am interested in the way they perform with each other, each painting becomes a different event, with its own moment. There is an eloquence in silence.

Bob White July 2026

All oil on canvas

Nos 1- 5:  30cm x 40cm

Nos 6: 30cm x 30cm

No 7: 40cm x 50cm

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