Be Still My Heart B Y PAT T I E C H A L M E R S
Growing up in Winnipeg Canada, I found solace in the pages of my father’s Time-Life Library of Art books during the short winter days. Initially, I was drawn to the flowing gowns and palpable flesh in the figurative paintings of Bruegel, Cranach, van Eyck, and Gainsborough. But as I repeatedly returned to these images, my attention was drawn to the objects within the painted scene, and I became enamoured of these seemingly haphazardly arranged belongings that were so carefully rendered. It was through these portraits that I began to gradually understand how an arrangement of objects could reveal as much, if not more, about a life than the static visage of the painted subject. These painted things piqued both my curiosity and imagination and led me to look at the still life paintings of Pieter Claesz, Cornelis Le Mair, Clara Peeters, and Paul Cezanne, among others. I would examine these arrangements like a crime scene detective looking for clues to a narrative that I could perhaps one day decipher. Eventually, I learned that the objects in these paintings were imbued with specific meanings—the ephemeral nature of beauty, the fleetingness of earthly pleasures, or the suggestion of spiritual devotion, for example. However, even with the key to the visual language, I continued to test my deductive skills; it was like returning to a film or book and becoming increasingly engaged with a subplot or the unresolved story of a minor character. While in art school, I learned of the 17th-century hierarchy of painting, a ranking of works from the most lauded historical paintings to the least valued paintings of still lifes. Despite (or perhaps, because of) the underappreciation of the genre, my admiration for these compositions continued to grow, as did my interest in contemplating how these collections of often mundane items could provide significant insight into the cultural, moral, and spiritual beliefs of a time—a vase, a lemon, a loaf of bread, flowers, a knife, a glass of wine—each pointing to meaning. This capacity of seemingly ordinary objects to contain memories and then ignite a connection is magical. I am inspired by our ability to condense such a variety of experiences into seemingly mundane mementos. This enduring interest in the language of still life paintings and the nature of objectness acted as the catalyst for organizing Be Still My Heart. “The appeal and power of still life…lie not only in its comprehensible scale, but in the fact that extraneous details are stripped away and what is left speaks to the responsive eye, simply and directly, of matters large and small. Of what do still lifes speak? Of relationships—connections, reflections, support, power, balance; of cause and effect; of things that have happened and will happen; of taste, touch, and smell; of man and nature; of markets and appetites and genetics and diet; of time, mortality, and regeneration.”¹ The artists included in this exhibition engage in a variety of approaches to making, their work reflecting moments of the past (both personal and historic), and presenting ideas of culture, class, identity and race. For me, a connection to the genre of still life is the linchpin. There is a sense of longing in all of this work, a request to slow down and give space to wonder and find meaning in the stillness. ¹Lowenthal, A.W. (1996) The Object as Subject: Studies in the Interpretation of Still Life. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, p.3