Red Table, Brown Jug 2009

Mary Fedden made this painting in 2009, with what looks like gouache on paper, and she called it *Red Table, Brown Jug*. The surface is built from planes of color: the warm hues of the red table against the darker, cooler jug. I imagine Mary, in her nineties at this point, carefully arranging these objects, maybe turning them this way and that, and then mixing the colors and applying them in simple, childlike shapes. The black feather, the white shell: they’re almost hieroglyphs, aren’t they? Each object rendered flatly, simply, but with an incredible amount of care. Think about the lineage of still life painting, from Chardin to Morandi, and then see how Fedden takes this tradition and pushes it in her own direction. The way she uses color and form is so direct, so unpretentious. It’s just lovely. It feels like a painter talking to other painters across time.