Marina Paul

APROPRIATING TAVORMINA'S STILL LIFE

This series of still-life photographs are an appropriation of Paulette Tavormina’s “Seizing Beauty.”  Looking at the Renaissance and Flemish still-life paintings, she photographs and recreates very similar scenery using flowers, fruit, vegetables, and antique ware, adding a personal mood and imagination to them, which can tell a story about a time and place. The title of her works includes the initials of the painters from whom she got inspired from.

Closely looking at Paulette's work and the way she appropriates paintings, Marina chose to follow some of her steps and, at her turn, to appropriate her still-life photographs. To add a painterly mood and a sense of a different space, the use of “chiaroscuro” lighting, a painting technique that uses high tonal contrasts between lights and darks, is prevalent throughout the entire series, where the objects are the story tellers.