In You Shouldn’t Have, still life becomes a stage where elegance tilts into mischief.
A knife that waits too close to the cake. Shadows that don’t behave.
Beauty polished until it starts to fray.
Knife Skills (2025) is the first of 6 or 7 same sized still life oil paintings from this series .
Artist’s Notes
This series dissects the modern religion of composure. Built from the language of civility: porcelain, sugar, water, light, it watches refinement curdle when pursued as salvation.
Across the paintings, objects meant to comfort begin to betray their purpose: the knife becomes a measure of control, the glass a mirror that refuses reflection. This realism isn’t nostalgic; it’s forensic.
Behind these meticulously lit scenes, politeness and charm operate as quiet forms of violence.
You, the viewer, are tested: will you reduce these works to commentary on feminine self-presentation, or will you recognize them as dissections of belief itself?
60 × 89 cm
oil on plexiglass
in private collection