The Embroidered Cloth

Still Life on an Embroidered Cloth, 2026

Oil on Canvas, 14”x11”

Secord Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia

The Embroidered Cloth

During the late Nova Scotian spring, when vibrant colour finally asserts itself I select tulips from our bulb garden to complement still life arrangements. I am presently working on a series that incorporates a beautiful linen tablecloth embellished with embroidered flowers.

I begin by presenting the work that started me in this direction; The Bonnard Still Life on an Embroidered Cloth, 2024. Working from photographs of the bath at Pierre Bonnard’s Home , Le Bosquet I was able to reconstruct the room where his wife Marthe took to the water to improve her health. I decided to enlarge the view of this private room to enable the inclusion of a round table in the foreground covered with an embroidered cloth. On this I placed items that Marthe might have assembled for her own use plus vases of tulips and orchids, a bowl of floating roses and by her head, a flowering plant. The vases frame the dachshund that accompanied her while she bathed but in this instance I posed my own little dog Pascal. The table and its cloth places the viewer where Marthe can be observed without disturbance while invited to visually explore her exotic surroundings.

In Still Life with an Embroidered Cloth painted two years later, I have changed my viewpoint to directly above the tulips and a purple Dome Flower in a Lomonosov porcelain vase embellished with pussy willow. The cloth gains importance as the support for a simpler still life made more dramatic by the shadows projected by the tulips that disappear beyond the top of the composition. It also invites the viewer to move through the composition without diminishing the importance of the opening tulips.

In these works I present the depiction of flora in three and two dimensional definitions giving an equality to both.

The Bonnard Still Life on an Embroidered Cloth, 2024

Oil on Canvas, 28”x22”

Collection of the artist