Three Pansies 2021

Curator: Before us we have Scott Fraser's "Three Pansies", a plein-air painting created in 2021. Its compact presentation brings to mind earlier Dutch still life painting, but it somehow feels entirely modern, too. Editor: It’s interesting you say that. I’m struck by the melancholy it evokes, the flowers so delicately balanced on the cusp of… something. The lighting, that slightly muddied color palette, it gives off a kind of emotional weight, doesn't it? Curator: The tonal restraint is key, certainly. The interplay of hues, in the flowers themselves and against the background, allows for a subtle orchestration of forms and delicate shadow work. Note the modulation of tone in each petal. The artist employs a tight, refined impasto technique. The focus pushes what could be dismissed as simple toward close looking. Editor: These pansies, though… each has a different "face," you know? The one on the left in quiet blues and purples feels demure, contemplative almost; the white one central in a virginal way; the third in dark yellows and violet is kind of bold, assertive. And then they are set in these terra cotta pots. It's loaded with simple symbolism of earth, potential and life, really. Curator: Yes, those subtle color and compositional echoes create these symbolic contrasts. He balances notan perfectly in his choice of color and how he makes one hue talk to another. What initially appeared flat opens up into spatial dialogue across the entire painting. Each flower anchors its individual structure within a unified system. Editor: Fraser's arranged them in a really fascinating way, placing those small details so they draw you to particular associations—do you notice the small leaves that have been shed onto the shelf and floor? Curator: The detritus, those almost overlooked moments. And those subtle shifts in textures animate our perceptions; Fraser is doing this quite deliberately through materiality and through his surface rendering, building up visual sensation as a type of knowledge. Editor: So, as we come to the close, it makes you really pause. Simple everyday moments and objects become reminders of life cycles. Curator: Absolutely. It is within these structural limits that something quite wonderful occurs in the way our visual systems start operating and looking for order.