G.B.W.C. #4 1982

Charles Bell made this painting, G.B.W.C. #4, without a date, but I can tell you it's an oil painting, and it's photorealist, which means that the artist's intention was to copy the appearance of a photograph. And when I say copy, I really mean, to transform. Looking at the surface texture of the painting, you can see that Bell relishes the challenge of describing the way light bounces off each of these surfaces. From the dull, matte skins of the peanuts on the left, to the transparent glass of the main jar, to the gleam of each gumball inside, Bell takes his time and makes these materials sing. Take a look at the way Bell handles the glass, particularly the top right of the sphere. We see reflections of the space, but we also get the sense of what it feels like to look through a curved, glass surface. Think about Van Gogh’s Still Life with Onions, which uses similar methods to distort our view of the everyday, and to remind us that painting is always a kind of seeing.