The Kildare Gallery is delighted to invite you to the opening of Nature & Time this March 7th at 3pm
The exhibition will be opened by one of Ireland’s leading Figurative painters, Blaise Smith R.H.A
Taking inspiration from still life painting throughout art history, my work is a contemporary take on the traditional still life and its associated themes. Everything in this form of still life is symbolic, objects are metaphor – for death, life, wealth and so on. This forms the core of my work, the starting point. I am combining man made and organic objects and using the relationships between the objects to form a concept. I am interested in the relationship we have with material objects and with nature, and with the relationship between those two. As human beings we seem to be obsessed with accumulating stuff, amassing wealth, material possessions, and collecting things that have no obvious use. The effect material objects have on us is what interests me, desire, nostalgia and what they represent to us. Many of these items last a long time, but they deteriorate and become old junk, cluttering up our homes or charity shops or landfills. They have a long physical lifespan but their value depreciates. On the other hand a single object in nature, like a flower, can have a very brief lifespan, a few months, a few days, a season. But as a whole nature thrives continuously, adapting with the seasons and regenerating constantly. There is an unavoidable relationship between these two, often combative as one negatively impacts the other. I’m interested in combining these opposing forces and illustrating the tension between them. It is a reflection on human nature and our impact on the world we live in.
