Ebony Truscott
Fine motor still life with Vermeer and carpet 2024
oil on linen
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne
Artist statement:
This painting shows a picture of Vermeer’s Lacemaker and a roll of carpet from a suburban nature strip. The carpet was found carefully tied, and like the Vermeer painting, showed the deft work of a stranger’s hand.
When drawing and painting I’m interested in the appearance of things at the moment of perception, their apparent material and spatial properties. Crucially, I can employ a heightened curiosity that in most other contexts would be antisocial.
I associate the woman’s posture here with hyperfocus and suspended time (like holding your breath when concentrating) but also with oppression. The curves of the Vermeer and the almost bloody-looking threads match the contained tension and fraying of the carpet.
The idea of contemporary experience containing past experience and of the present unfurling is a key theme.