Sometimes artists like putting strong shapes in their paintings. This still-life by John Bowen shows food on a table. You can see he enjoyed the geometrical shapes of some of his objects – the round tomato and slice of lemon and the nearly oval fish and whole lemons. He added lots more geometrical shapes. The tablecloth is decorated with stripes, circles, squares and triangles. Instead of showing the table-top in perspective he made it a square. The pink paper under the fish is almost a triangle. The wallpaper is lines and dots.
Task
You will need paints, paper and scissors, or a computer drawing package.
- Make a still life of your own that features geometrical shapes.
- Use different-sized triangles, squares, circles, rhombuses, rectangles or other shapes.
Visit
Possible to visit:
- Still Life with Lemons, 1956, by John Bowen is at Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Merthyr Tydfil