Painting the Studio Itself — Skull, Brushes and Objects Around Me

I spend a lot of time in my studio, so from the beginning I wanted it to be more than a practical room containing an easel and paint. I wanted it to be a place where I genuinely enjoy being.

That means old furniture, paintings on the walls, frames, books, brushes, objects brought back from travels and other things that gradually accumulate because I find them beautiful, strange or simply interesting to look at.

I wrote more about the space itself in Inside the Studio — Where Oil Paintings Become Objects . The more time I spend there, the more I realise that the studio does not only contain paintings. It can become a subject for them.

A room designed to provide its own subjects

There was another reason for making the studio visually interesting. I liked the idea that, even without travelling anywhere, I could turn around and find something worth painting inside the room itself.

In that sense I have always liked the example of Joaquín Sorolla and his own garden in Madrid. The garden was not simply the space around his house: it repeatedly became a painting subject in its own right. I like the same principle on a much smaller and more chaotic scale — surrounding myself with things that can eventually enter a painting.

A frame leaning against a wall, an old chair, an object brought home from a journey or a group of worn brushes can become as useful to me as a landscape outside the window.

The brushes are not props

The large group of brushes in the centre of the painting are my actual working brushes. Many of them are Rosemary & Co brushes that I use for oil painting . Their worn handles, different shapes and accumulated paint were much more interesting to me than a perfectly clean set arranged specially for a still life.

The blue pot holding them has also spent a long time in the studio, collecting marks of paint on its surface. Against the dark red background it became the strongest colour accent in the centre of the composition.

Still life and self-portrait without a figure

The skull gives the painting an obvious connection with vanitas and memento mori painting, but I do not see the work only in those terms.

In a way, it is also a studio self-portrait without the painter. The brushes, books and objects say something about the person using the room even though no figure appears in the composition.

The skull provides the large pale form in the lower half of the painting, while the brushes break upward into many smaller marks. Between them, the blue pot, red ground and dark objects create the colour structure that holds the composition together.