Ebony Truscott
Fine motor still life with Vermeer and carpet 2024
oil on linen
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne

Ebony Truscott
Fine motor still life with Vermeer and carpet 2024
oil on linen
Courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne


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.