Souvenir 1905

This is a small, intimate oil painting of a tabletop still life by the Scottish artist Samuel Peploe. I’m imagining he built it up slowly, mixing greyed, muted tones, with a kind of gentle touch, trying to capture the way the light hits objects in a room. It's like he's thinking about how objects communicate with each other and what it means to carefully observe and arrange them. The way he handles the paint is so delicate and nuanced. The book with its white pages and green binding feels weighty, somehow both present and withdrawn. And that reflective jug! I bet it gave him such a headache trying to capture the light. It shimmers in the gloom. Peploe was part of the Scottish Colourists. They were all about the way that color could communicate feeling and sensation. You can feel him experimenting, and figuring out how to make it all sit together, a quiet conversation on canvas. It is like he's inviting us to look closely at the ordinary and find beauty and poetry in the everyday.