Pear Study (2024)

Pear Study was created as an early exploration of still-life composition and controlled lighting. The subject is modest — a single pear resting against darkness — yet the painting uses this simplicity to study tone, surface, and the quiet emotional charge of observation.

The warm light isolates the form, revealing its weight and volume while allowing the background to dissolve into abstraction. The curved silhouette of the pear acts as an anchor for the composition, while the leaf and stem introduce a sense of movement and fragility. It’s a balance between solidity and delicacy, permanence and decay.

As with many of my still-life works, the focus lies not on symbolism but presence — the meditative act of seeing. In painting the pear, I was less interested in realism than in atmosphere: the intimacy that occurs when a single object becomes momentarily infinite in its detail.

Painted digitally using traditional oil-inspired methods,Pear Study employs a limited palette of ochre, umber, and crimson, layered to create warmth and depth. The brushwork moves from broad and gestural in the background to more deliberate strokes along the light edge of the fruit. Textural variation mimics the resistance of natural paint, giving the piece a tangible sense of surface. The composition draws influence from Dutch still-life painting, reimagined through a contemporary, minimal lens.