1. SHERRIE WOLF PAINTER Vanessa Mae Adagio cantabile click
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2. I have always been a still-life painter
I have always been a still-life painter. My images openly play with the fact that art is artifice. In recent years, I have arranged objects in front of excerpts from old master paintings. Earlier in my career, while imitating 19th century American Trompe l’oil and 17th century Dutch still-life traditions in subject matter and formal elements of composition, I explored contrived or discovered relationships between seemingly unrelated objects. Mirrors or other formal objects often reflected the contemporary clutter of my studio. Light, shadow and three-dimensional spatial relationships played important roles, and I often used nontraditional perspectives, such as looking straight down on the still life arrangement. Among the subject matter, there would be an open book or a card portraying an image from a historical painting. In time, these excerpts became more prominent, and eventually I filled the entire background with a quotation from an old master painting. This connected me to a history of reinterpretation and artistic borrowing prevalent among artists. My images have evolved from a love of art history and a desire to present multiple levels of expression to my viewer

3. Art stretches us by being several things at once
Art stretches us by being several things at once. It can be a ripe fruit ready to fall off the canvas onto the floor, but also, when viewed closely, a collection of brush strokes on a flat surface. The landscape that I place in the background is a flat surface but simultaneously a space in which the still-life objects reside. The objects are ordinary, but simultaneously monumental by virtue of their relationship to the majestic landscape in the background. Small scale animals and figures in the landscape are potent reminders of time, scale and our relationship to the natural environment. A vase of flowers before a dramatic deep space makes a comment by juxtaposing the mundane with the sublime, and also finds a potent emotional interaction that enhances some aspect of a past painter’s message. These dualities give me a rich palate for exploration. I set up my arrangements for color and formal compositional elements as well as for emotional and conceptual content. Content often derives from interactions that are discovered by trial and experiment. I enjoy finding resonance that did not at first occur to me

4. Plum and Lemon

5. Still Life After
Caravaggio

6. Fruit Bowl After Orazio Gentileschi

7. Dutch Still Life

8. The Surprise

9. Cherries After de Braij

10. Self Portrait After
Vigee-Le Brun

11. Italian Plumes After Artemisia Gentileschi

12. Apricot After
Jordaens

13. Papers after Rubens

14. Fruit Plate after Vecchio

15. Fruit Bowl after Romney

16. Fruit Plate after Ingres

17. Fruit Plate after Ingres

18. Raspberries with Mt.Hood

19. Cherries

20. Peaches after
Rubens

21. Cherries after Artemisia Gentileschi

22. Two Squash

23. Fruit Bowl after
Vigee Le Brun

24. Pedestal after Van Dyck

25. Still Life after Stubbs

26. Still Life after Vernet

27. Lilies after Bouguereau

28. Still Life after Bonheur

29. White Tulips after Nicolas Poussin

30. Red Pear with
Adelaide Guiard

31. Yellow Tulip
with
Vigee-Le Brun

32. Poppies with the Andes after F.E.Church

33. Tangerines with Falls after Gustav Grunewald

34. Cherries with Pastoral Woman after Gerrit van Honthorst

35. Tulip and Peach
with Portrait of Lady

36. Still Life with Susanna and the Elders

37. Cacophony

38. Tulips with Concert of Birds

39. Dog and Duck

40. T H E E N D
A.C
May