Nancy McCadden O’Brien
Anderson Gallery
May 5th - 9th, 2025
Reception May 8th 5-7 pm
Like a portrait can elevate a figure, still-life wields the power to hoist the mundane. My charcoal still-life drawings beautify and glorify discarded natural and human-caused objects and spaces, inviting the viewer to contemplate the passage of time, age, and mortality. My practice involves scavenging wooded and domestic areas, seeking materials in varying degrees of decay and disrepair—removing them from their original environment and curating them into controlled compositions. A deliberate nod is made toward the genre of Vanitas, in particular, the still-life painters of the Dutch Golden Age as objects are placed to interact and contrast with each other to reflect the tension around the desire to control the cyclical nature of life. By rendering objects at their actual size, the still lifes invite the viewer to relate to the drawings on a human scale.
