Slightly out of focus

Abstract

Slightly out of focus is a body of work that I exhibited at the 2025 RMB Latitudes Art Fair as an independent artist. The exhibition consisted of 11 new paintings in oil on canvas and one older work included because of its conceptual relevance. My focus was on still life, an enduring interest in my work. Most of the objects depicted are either my own or those displayed in a friend’s house, photographed and archived over many years. The paintings stand as evidence of objects acquired and treasured, moved and displayed over time, so that one recognises the same objects in different settings in different paintings. The objects are repositories of memory and obsession, testaments to the stories of their owner or those to whom they once belonged. While at first glance evocative of the cabinet curiosities phenomenon, the paintings invite reflection beyond their deceptive simplicity, to conversations about stories and histories emerging from the juxta-positioning of objects. In addition to the overt subject matter, the paintings make visible the central role that the camera’s mediation plays in my painting practice. The paintings are emphatically photographic: in the flattening of shadows and light; depth and shallowness of field; the blur effected by the camera; and the contrast between vibrant colour and monochromatic grey, the latter referencing my work based on old black and white photographs and film stills. Photography, then, is used as a means to set the subject matter at a double remove, adding to the haunting and melancholy stillness that underlie the apparent chaotic compositions. In a sense every still life is a memento mori – a reminder of the fragility and transience of existence and of the immutable and silent presence of objects, remote from that which falls outside their confined spaces. The staging of still life objects arguably implies a certain control over the world. I explore, through painting, to what extent my painting process and technique may shift the viewer’s encounter with these objects depicted in my paintings. In the way in which they are painted, the objects are there, 'present,' but disappearing in the blur of paint. I ask how still life can reorient the viewer’s attention and make visible the subtle, uncanny reciprocity of objects staring back at the viewer, signifying something unreachable and uncanny, which we cannot control. The question underpinning these works, and, to a large extent, a greater part of my research and art-making, is to what extent can the banal, everydayness, keep informing or shaping our views and approach to life and its challenges, with the possibilities for change, finding new avenues of seeing and responding to the world. The primary aim is to explore, in painting, what can be brought into focus through a seemingly random selection of objects in paint, especially considering the proliferation of still life paintings in an image-saturated world. The aim is to examine ways in which the uncanny phenomenon of objects looking back at us, decentering the individual, can be activated or set in motion in paint. The research methodology is practice-led in that the creative process both derives from and informs theoretical underpinnings pertaining to still life painting specifically, but also painting’s interaction with photography. The scholarly framework is not only the literature on still life itself – historical contexts, which change the meaning of any particular still life painting at any given time—but is also framed against discourses integral to both photography and painting and issues of representation and identity. The RMB Latitudes Art Fair provided a platform that reaches a wide audience, and the exhibition must, therefore, also be viewed in conversation with the other exhibitions. The works elicited comments not only on the objects depicted but also around the blur infused in the painting technique. In pursuing extensions to other ways of seeing, my work embraces the tradition of still life via working directly from photographs beyond observation. The infused blurriness illuminates and evokes notions of liminality and the transience of the real as it plays out in daily lives. Themes that underpin my work, and these works in particular, formed part of a lecture to Unisa students and staff at Unisa Art Gallery during June 2026.