Coloured Still Life 1967

Patrick Caulfield made this ‘Coloured Still Life’ using flat blocks of bold colour contained by black outlines. He’s not trying to trick you into thinking these objects are real, but more like building blocks, or cut-outs, as if creating a scene on a table top. What is so compelling about this, for me, is how the physical properties of the paint itself – its flatness and uniform colour – are put to work to create this effect. It reminds me that paintings are always, first and foremost, about the physical properties of their making; they don’t disappear into an illusion, but instead present themselves as material objects. Look at that green bowl on the right-hand side, so solid and contained, yet still inviting you to consider it as form and colour only. Caulfield’s approach to painting reminds me a little of Ellsworth Kelly’s early work. Both artists play with the boundaries between representation and abstraction. There's a lovely back-and-forth in art, people seeing what others have done, and talking back to them in their own visual language.