Still Life with Plaster Cast 1931

This is Samuel Peploe's painting, Still Life with Plaster Cast, and I can just feel the making of this in the brushstrokes, like he's wrestling with the objects, figuring them out as he goes. Imagine him, brush in hand, squinting at the plaster cast, then dabbing that cool white onto the canvas. The colors are so alive, you can feel him pushing paint around, mixing and remixing until it feels just right. Look at the way he's captured the sheen on that black vase – juicy, right? It's like he's saying, "Here's how I see this stuff, take it or leave it." Peploe wasn't afraid to be himself, and that's what makes his paintings so darn good. You can see a conversation happening between him and artists like Manet and Cezanne. These guys were all about capturing the world as they saw it, not how it was supposed to look. Painting, for them, was a way of thinking.