This May, Guy Peploe selects from the subject of Still Life and has written a haiku for each picture within the exhibition.
The haiku form is a spare, immediate poetic form. Created in response to a painting these short poems are in complete contrast to our usual factual and analytic picture notes, but we hope will provide subtle ways into the appreciation of each work. If any wish to have a go we will be happy to publish them online.
Mary Armour, Poppies and Still life, 1946, oil on board, 60 x 50 cm
Remembrance petals fall
On sketchbooks, memento mori
Starts with self and beauty
William Crosbie, Abstract Still life, c.1970, oil painting, 111.7 x 116.8 cm
Flattened forms and curves
Colour complex brilliantly lit
A Breton Jug with flowers
William Crosbie, Roses in a Grey Vase on Purple Cloth, 1991, oil on board, 35.7 x 30.4 cm
Tight rosebuds, opening
Constrained in space, spot-lit
A theatre of Flowers
Victoria Crowe, Advent Assembly, c. 1991, mixed media, 80 x 99 cm
No rest for the mind?
A cornucopia of memories
Can find a settled place
J D Fergusson, Still Life at La Petite Farandole Antibes, c.1912, conte and watercolour, 24.5 x 20.5 cm
Conte and wash, decisive
Structure in the heat of passion
Till War sent lovers north
Sir William Gillies, Still Life, Pot with Daisies, oil on canvas, 58.5 x 112 cm
Braque; a structure made
With rigour, form significant
But his sister’s pots
John Houston, Still Life with Grapes, oil on board, 24 x 34.5 cm
They are grapes and paint
Luscious paint in thick impasto
Like jewels set in leaves
Christine McArthur, The Crimson Window, mixed media on panel, 76 x 76 cm
A fiery aperture
Flowers red on red, familiar
Protects from the dark
Sir William MacTaggart, The Studio Window, c.1966, mixed media on blue paper, 63 x 47 cm
Night over Drummond Place
Light from the dusk crepuscular
An offering of flowers
Ellen Malcolm, Still Life, oil on board, 31.5 x 40 cm
Pale fading into light
Ephemeral by nature
Lost in permanence
Alberto Morrocco, Pumpkin and Cactus, oil on canvas, 54.6 x 57.2 cm
Round up, round down, zesty
A harmonious conversation
Of Fruit and Cactus
Leon Morrocco, Still Life
Painted sound triumphant
Lillies trumpet daisies trill
Dark table sonorous bass
Denis Peploe, Torquil's Tins, oil on canvas, 64 x 76 cm
The Old Manse Plockton
His friend’s paint pots at rest
By lamplight made art
Denis Peploe, Pansies Shell and Mountain, oil on canvas, 46 x 61 cm
The dark ridge of Suilven
Shelters the delicate petals
Incongruous but true
SJ Peploe, Still Life with Roses, oil on canvas, 35 x 26.5 cm
Two roses in a vase
A petal fallen, white on dun
A love affair begun
Anne Redpath, The White Dish, watercolour, 36.5 x 47 cm
White like crumpled linen
But moving, alive while still, lively
Flowers given with love
Duncan Shanks, Begonia Rex, oil on canvas, 64 x 77 cm
All life will pass by
The underpainting visible through black
Death will enrich the earth
Duncan Shanks, Flowers, 1985, gouache on paper, 56 x 76 cm
Plucked from his garden
Flowers in simple vases. Red
Rich but desiccating
