What is worthy of our deepest love are those subtle and genuine experiences that inhabit everyday life. They do not seek transcendence beyond themselves, nor do they claim superiority. They simply return us to our sincere selves.
This is also where the paintings of Scottish artist Jack Dunnett take shape. He works with oil paint, household chemicals, and construction materials. Layering, scraping, covering, and layering again. Materials have a temperament of their own; he relinquishes part of his control, allowing time and chance to become part of the work. He regards painting as a form of “care” for life — much like tending to fruits and vegetables growing in the earth, requiring patience, presence, and an acceptance of the rhythms of nature.
Most of these works emerged from two years spent in close proximity to his family. Amid the small details and changes of everyday life, time seemed to unfold at length. Talking, falling silent, seeing everything around him anew; there was no need for dramatic narratives, only the experience of being truly present. Through observation and sensation, Jack recorded these traces: adhesion and peeling, seepage and receptivity; each movement of the material, each act of holding and releasing, seems like a plant quietly putting down roots, shedding its skin, and unfolding.
“The Living Still Life" is, ultimately, to care for the most ordinary presence of life. Each painting is a concrete, fresh act of growth. They stand quietly here, like a garden of freshly picked fruits and vegetables, carrying the lingering warmth of earth and time, waiting for each person to approach them and experience them through the lens of their own life.
The philosopher Tan Jiazhe writes in Thoughts on Grass:
“To be at peace with one’s simple and sincere self.”
