“Painting is an act of life”
– Candace LovelyLovely elevated her technique in painting classical still life compositions while training at the Boston School. In what she describes as a demanding student environment where still life was “something they’d make you really work at – to get a still life approved,” she mastered the ability to get her settings accepted quickly.
Her first still life (“Island Still Life”) featured components that, in the artist’s words, “tell the Nantucket story with all Nantucket things.” “Merit of Excellence,” however, was her first still life created at the ateliers of the Boston School. Of the latter she recalls her instructor unpinning the yellow ribbon she’d secured in place, “turning it on his finger, rolling it up, he tossed it and it bounced into place. This is dance,” he said, “let the ribbon express itself.”
Of the still life she would go on to create in her burgeoning career, one could say the dance continued. Lovely’s stills are delightfully unstill, teeming with interest, symbolism, eclecticism, and extravagance. Like a set of succinct visual poems, each tells a story (of Nantucket, or her Vermont childhood, or of nature with shells and flowers depicting a local ecology). Lovely playfully (though accurately) refers to some of her still life assortments as “a parade of things.”
Lovely elevated her technique in painting classical still life compositions while training at the Boston School. In what she describes as a demanding student environment where still life was “something they’d make you really work at – to get a still life approved,” she mastered the ability to get her settings accepted quickly.
Her first still life (“Island Still Life”) featured components that, in the artist’s words, “tell the Nantucket story with all Nantucket things.” “Merit of Excellence,” however, was her first still life created at the ateliers of the Boston School. Of the latter she recalls her instructor unpinning the yellow ribbon she’d secured in place, “turning it on his finger, rolling it up, he tossed it and it bounced into place. This is dance,” he said, “let the ribbon express itself.”
Of the still life she would go on to create in her burgeoning career, one could say the dance continued. Lovely’s stills are delightfully unstill, teeming with interest, symbolism, eclecticism, and extravagance. Like a set of succinct visual poems, each tells a story (of Nantucket, or her Vermont childhood, or of nature with shells and flowers depicting a local ecology). Lovely playfully (though accurately) refers to some of her still life assortments as “a parade of things.”
