YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE
Tereza Barnard, Knife Skills (2025), oil on plexiglass
You thought it was tea.
The objects were made, not found. Fabricated by hand, finished before the first brushstroke. A china cup with a scene painted on it. I painted the scene before I painted the porcelain onto the plexiglass. Two paintings, one inside the other. One visible. One almost.
The titles speak the way certain phrases do. Warmly, correctly, with good manners. Best Behaviour. Within Normal Parameters. With Compliments, You Shouldn't Have. Social language, the kind that means one thing out loud and does something else entirely. I'd been collecting these phrases for years before I noticed I was collecting them.
Bone china felt like the right container. Its own established language: delicacy, ceremony, the performance of a particular kind of care. Plexiglass has the opposite It’s hard, cold and optically precise. A surface that doesn't absorb. Everything sits on top, exactly where you put it. Realism on a surface that gives nothing away.
All six paintings are 60 × 89 cm. Small enough to hold your attention entirely. You are looking at the thing itself, and you are not.
The series is not finished.
One of six. The first released; the rest to come.
A private list exists for those following the series closely. Inquire