This vividly colorful painting has a lot going on. As with Preachen’s “Still Life on a Balcony,” space is radically discontinuous here: flowers, table covering, fields, and sky each occupy their own flat plane; the dark brown stoneware pitcher…
In its objects, archictecture, and visual style, this painting gestures back to earlier centuries of allegorical still lifes. On this side of an ornate railing, the seeming bounty is undermined by intimations of suffering (gladiolus), overconsumption…
A vividly colored grouping avoids any appearance of symmetry or regularity of shape—even a painted plate isn’t circular. Likewise, mottling seems part of Preachen’s design as if to demonstrate that beauty can be irregular. Reds and oranges dominate…
At upper left are the flowers of this still life’s putative title, but it still doesn’t account for the majority of Preachen’s composition. Their bright orange petals activate several objects in a similar tone (fruit, a piece of fabric, a painted…