On Repetition and Looming Death

In the early days of this project I tried not to recycle the same props too many times. I felt like rearranging and reusing the same pieces for multiple different compositions was 'cheating' somehow.

I knew nothing about art back then.

Since those early days I've become a lot more familiar with the works of those great masters of still life. Looking over those old paintings it's painfully obvious that the repetition and reuse and rearrangement have always been staples of the genre. (I'm pretty sure I've seen the same goblet appear in at least 3 Pieter Claesz paintings, and then reappear in at least 3 more by Willem Claesz Heda...)

I've matured a lot as an artist since those early days and I no longer feel uncomfortable revisiting the same themes and props over and over. In the age of COVID-19 and quarantine this kind of repetition has become a necessity for me to keep producing art.

But more than that...

The repetition and reiteration now seems meaningful to me. The days bleed together. We do the same handful of activities to stay busy with the child over and over. We eat the same meals over and over. The same anxiety and looming fear of death haunts us day in and day out. The chattering screen ceaselessly reminds me how many people have died. Sometimes they are close to home, sometimes they are in far flung places I'm not sure I could locate on a map. But always the same tragedy, always the same grim human loss. I scroll down the bottomless feed and there's more of it. And there will be more tomorrow.

And so I keep on arranging the bones, stacking silverware, collecting dead flowers. And, each time, the themes seem that much more relevant.