Previous Shows: 2013: States of Being: Rebecca Campbell

http://www.rebeccacampbell.net/ 

These paintings are from a suite ode to my twin daughters. Josephine was taken and Andromeda was saved. I found inspiration and solace in allegorical still life. It allowed me to meditate on loss and celebrate survival through the power and simplicity of observational painting. 

Caring for a child is so tangible. You see a need and fill it. Hunger needs food. Exhaustion needs rest. Sadness needs comfort. What was the need in the work, to record, to feel, to understand? If I could determine the need how would I fill it? I decided to reflect on the hardest thing in the simplest possible way. I remembered how Manet said more to me about the beggar with his bits of broken glass and fish skin than with the hole in his shoe. I remembered Zurbaran’s faith in lemons. I remembered how Van Gogh had the courage to look at death. 

It’s a simple act to look and paint. There is no cutting edge in sight. It’s what flickers between the edges, burning and warming us both, that the practice has managed to gather. We are all given birth to begin and death to end. This experience is not exclusive or unique. The record painting offers is not either but we simply have a need to find meaning and have built tools to try and fill it.